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Xovell’g Meetmineter Series 

A Question 

of Taste 


HY 

Maarten Maartens 


Author of" The Sin of Joost Avelinghf etc. 


NE IV YORK 

LOVELL, CORYELL & COMP AN 

43, 45 AND 47 EAST TENTH STREET 

ed Monthly. Annual Subscription^ $3.50. March i8q2. 

Entered at the Post Office, New York, as second class matter. 


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A QUESTION OF TASTE 




MAARTEN MAARTENS /V' 

AUTHOR OF / 

“the sin of joost aveungh,” etc. 

'7)Ua^ 





( 

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NEW YORK 

LOVELL, CORYELL & COMPANY 

43, 45 AND 47 EAST tenth street 
e/O. 




^Z-3 

, $41 Q 


*>* 


Copyright, *891, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


CHAPTER I. 

JORIS middelstum’s strong points. 

JoRis Middelstum was a bachelor. Do not be angry 
with him, ladies, on that account. Supposing that it 
may have been partly his fault, you cannot deny that 
it was undoubtedly still more his misfortune. He was 
one of those men who go on being bachelors because 
they have never been properly compelled to leave off. 
I do not say, mind you, that he would have surrendered 
to the very first fair huntress who gave chase to him, 
but I think he would hardly have eluded the second. 
For he dreaded, above all things, to give pain. 

Joris Middelstum was a bachelor. Nevertheless, he 
was a good man. He did not deserve so cruel a 
fate. 

He was a bachelor, for love of women. Or, 
rather for love of one peerless woman, sweetest, 
purest, loveliest of her race. He had loved that 
woman from the beginning, and he felt as if he must 
love her to the end. He was always looking at other 
members of the sex, and studying them on the sly, 
to compare them with this one ideal that to him was 
a reality — and as often as he looked, he would turn 


6 


A QUESTION OP TASTE. 


away in disgust. I fancy that very often he had made 
up his mind to turn away beforehand. For it had 
become rather a foregone conclusion with him — what 
the people who are guided and misguided by reason 
only call 3. parti pris — that there never had been and 
never could be a woman equal to the woman he loved. 
That woman had returned his love— with interest, as 
they always do — until the last spark of life had faded 
away out of eyes that were still fixed upon his. She 
had been his mother ; and she had died last year. 

They had always lived together, and he felt that she 
had wronged him by going away so soon. He knew, 
of course, that the feeling was ridiculous, and that is, 
I suppose, why he combated it and tried to suppress 
it till he wedged it down tight in his brain, where it 
stuck. It was his only grievance against his dear 
departed idol, but it grew to be a very real one, 
especially when Dientje twice burned the soup. 

For his mother had spoiled him, hopelessly, help- 
lessly, and — Dientje said — for ever. She had slaved for 
him, as only mothers can. For a wife surrenders her 
comfort to her husband, and, if she be the one in a 
thousand whom so many thousand husbands seem 
providentially to have succeeded in getting, she will 
even dutifully give up her will to her lord, but a 
thorough-going, devoted, doting mother has no com- 
fort to sacrifice and no will to annihilate, as soon as 
her only son’s good pleasure is concerned. In one word, 
it will now be evident to all, even to mothers with no 
sons and too many daughters, how it had come about 
that Middelstum had remained a bachelor until the age 
of thirty-four. He was one of those alarming males 
that have lived too long under the old hen’s wing. 
Such persons ought to be marked with a danger-buoy 
on the matrimonial sea. 

Our metaphors are getting mixed, and it is high time 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 7 

that we returned to the language of plain common 
sense. 

In that language, then, Joris Middelstum was a 
good-looking, good-hearted fellow, not over-brilliant 
and not over-dull, a fellow with a hearty word for 
every man he came across in the street, and a shy 
look for the few ladies he was obliged to speak to from 
time to time. He had obtained a place in the Dutch 
Civil Service, as soon as he left the Grammar School, 
his father’s premature death having upset the plans 
already formed for a University education. They had 
popped him on to a stool in one of the great rooms of 
the Ministry of Finance, where a number of men of 
all ages were stuck on stools already, and everybody 
had told him that he was exceedingly lucky and must 
manage to stick on. But he had refused to do so. 
He had slipped off, and over the heads of much older 
men, and he was now a person of some importance, 
as can be shown by the fact that he had a little room 
to himself. Only one other m^n in the Office had got 
promotion as rapidly as he. And this man nobody 
had envied his happiness, because it was generally 
admitted of him t4i«t he wrote the roundest, neatest 
hand in the service, and as the minister was short- 
sighted, every one felt that he could not do otherwise 
than he did. But Middelstum’s hand was not neater 
than the average everybody’s. His ideas may have 
been so, only that con’d not be taken into account, for 
the minister would never have admitted that he was 
short-sighted inside as well as out. Perhaps he was 
not. Besides, ideas were not wanted in the Ministry 
of Finance. They were apt to lower the revenue. 

Middelstum’s great superiority was that, although 
he occasionally may have had sensible ideas, he had 
the still greater sense to keep them to himself. He 
never said in the Office, or allowed to be printed in a 


8 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


Review, one word which indicated that he had 
opinions of his own on any subject which the people 
in authority or the States-General had allowed their 
wisdom to illuminate. He never suggested that any- 
body should do anything which somebody else had 
not done before. But whatever was given him to do, 
he did neatly, carefully, precisely, without any un- 
certainty, and without any of that originality which 
is so often inaccuracy or ignorance. It will be seen 
at once that he was the very perfection of an official. 
He was like one of those servants to whom you need 
never say “But you shouldn’t think !” or “But you 
ought to have thought ! ” Some people tell you it is 
very unreasonable to say those two things to the 
same person. They are mistaken. There is a line 
of demarcation, to a subordinate’s thinking, beyond 
which he should neither fall nor rise. 

Joris Middelstum found compensation in a couple 
of innocent hobbies for the enforced objectivity of 
office routine. The moderate amount of imagination 
which was his, found a harmless vent in a neat little 
talent for drawing and the study of entomology, and 
that was a good thing, for imagination in a Govern- 
ment Office is like a box of matches in the Royal 
Powder Magazine. 

They put them out. 

Joris Middelstum had the finest collection of butter- 
flies in Holland — the finest private collection, of 
course. It was the thing on earth he loved best after 
his mother. He invariably took his holiday in some 
place where flying and crawling things abound. And 
he caught them, and stuck pins into them, and 
arranged them with exquisite neatness in exquisite 
cases, and I believe he even remembered their un- 
reasonable Latin names. 

Yes, he was a great entomologist. His mother 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 9 

dusted the collection and kept it in spick and span 
order. She arranged it and sorted it with him if the 
families happened to get mixed through somebody’s 
carelessness — sometimes Joris s. Oh, how glad she 
was when it was Joris’s ! — and she took an interest 
in the brown beetle with six legs and the green beetle 
with eight. No greater proof of her foolish affection 
can be given than is contained in the confession that 
she loathed and abhorred all things creeping and 
crawling, and that she never betrayed her secret to 
her son. From a child she had been subject to the 
exaggerated weakness that the sight of beetles or 
spiders by day was very apt to bring on fits of scream- 
ing in her sleep, so vividly did their hideousness im- 
press her. Occasionally these nightmares would 
return after a day with Joris s many-legged monsters, 
and once or twice he complained of the disturbance 
they made, and advised her to consult a doctor about 
them. She meekly answered that she could not help 
it. She did not think a doctor would do any good, 
she said. 

Besides his collection of gorgeous butterflies, he 
had a neat collection of gorgeous coats-of-arms. For 
heraldic drawing was his forte. And the splendour 
of man’s inventions — there was a good deal of simi- 
larity between the two — far outshone the humble efforts 
of Nature, as regards the mere conglomeration of col- 
ours. The old lady liked the armorial designs much 
better than the beetles’ wings. Her mother had been 
the dowerless daughter of a barren Baron. And so 
she had genteel tastes. 

Between these amateur studies and his daily duty 
Joris Middelstum’s life streamed on its tranquil way. 
It rarely overflowed its banks. His day was taken 
up by his share of that incessant ciphering which an- 
nually increases the deficit ; after office-hours came 


10 


A question- of taste. 


the club and a modest rubber ; after the club, dinner, 
and after dinner an occasional night at the Opera, 
more commonly a quiet evening at home with his 
birds and beasts, either heraldic, on blazoned shields, 
or natural, in cardboard boxes. He very seldom 
went out to dinner or to some men’s little supper. 
As for the noisy summer vulgarity of Scheveningen, 
he shrank back from it into the quiet of their own 
small garden, where his mother cultivated roses — her 
hobby, in so far as her all-absorbing son still left room 
for extras. In fact, if he quitted the house of an even- 
ing, it was usually because she had one or two old 
cronies in to drink tea with her. She only had them 
at stated periods, when the inevitable invitation could 
no longer be put off. For she also preferred to sit 
opposite her son and pour out his tea for him, while 
he painted the splendiferous blazonments of the rela- 
tions of her mother the Baroness, and told her about 
his morning’s work in the Office, and how the minis- 
try were going to reduce the Soap Tax a penny in the 
pound by adding twopence to the Salt Tax. They 
always reduced the taxes in that way. 

It was a clever system, for it augmented the rev- 
enue, and it always left somebody content because 
his taxes had been reduced. 

Middelstum did not consider himself an incapable 
Government functionary. His successful career had 
proved to him that this could not be the case. But it 
was not as a financial Pillar of the State that he looked 
upon himself with pleasure in the glass of his legiti- 
mate pride. It was as a man of science that he loved 
to dwell upon his achievements. He felt secretly 
convinced, though he would never have owned it, not 
even to himself, that he would have been a European 
authority on a couple of the “ ologies ” into which 
entomology is divided, could he only have given his 


A QUESTION' OF TASTE. 1 1 

whole life to the subject. While carefully avoiding 
all politics and political economy, he frequently wrote 
short essays in foreign journals on the habits and 
peculiarities of some tiny monstrosity that nobody 
fortunately ever comes across. And he had pub- 
lished — also in Germany — a plump little monograph 
on earwigs. His mother had lived in a panic of 
anxiety, while he was making the necessary studies 
one summer, lest one of these disgusting wrigglers 
should wriggle itself into her darling’s ear. But her 
face glowed with admiring pleasure, when the orange- 
covered pamphlet came home, stiff and fresh from the 
great foreign publishers, and the foreign specialists 
wrote and printed words of warm recognition. She 
could not read all this learning, nor could she have 
understood had she read it. But she understood quite 
enough. She knew that it was all so much condensed 
excellency and praise of the most excellent and 
praiseworthy of men. She had but one regret, that 
he would not allow her to speak of his fame to the 
whole city. But in this he was wiser than she. 

“ I hear you are interested in enti — ento — mology. 
Mynheer Middelstum,” the Minister had once re- 
marked — casually, you might have thought. 

Joris blushed — not a frequent thing in men past 
thirty— and stuttered and looked down. ‘ ‘ ‘ Interested ’ 
is a strong word, your Excellency,” he said. “ I have 
a fine collection of butterflies. I have got them to- 
gether during one or two summers, when I spent my 
holidays in Gelderland.” 

“ Butterflies ! ’’repeated the Keeper of the National 
Purse. “ And do you — eh — have to catch them 
yourself.? ” 

Joris bent before that terrible, short-sighted stare. 
“Yes, your Excellency, ” he said, “ but it’s a knack. 


12 


A Q UESTION OF TASTE. 


If you ve once got into the habit of the thing, you 
don’t require to — to — run so verj/ fast. ” 

He sighed to himself, when he stood outside the 
Cabinet. “ What a scientist is lost ! ” he said. And 
the thought cannot be called a fatuous one, for he was 
not one of your pottering, blundering rubbish-collect- 
ors, but a genuine lover of cheslips and centipedes. 
After the publication of his ‘ ‘ Earwigs, their habits 
and peculiarities, ” he received a nomination as 
“ Honorary Member ” from the Royal Entomological 
Society of Roumania. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


13 


CHAPTER 11. 

AND AMIABLE WEAKNESSES. 

Mevrouw Middelstum knew all about her Joris. She 
could have turned him inside out and not discovered 
anything new. Only that she saw everything under 
the stage-light of her own admiration. That, of 
course, was unavoidable. She had studied him for 
more than thirty years, and she could have told you 
all about him : his virtues, which were so resplendent, 
and his peculiarities, which were so original, and his 
little weaknesses, which were virtues seen from 
another side — les defauts de ses qualites. Vices he 
had none. And he also had no faults. 

She was rather too fond, perhaps, of telling you all 
about him. How he had the measles when he was 
three, and fell downstairs when he was five, and how 
once, in his earliest youth, he had told a lie (that 
was a very long story) and had never told one after, 
and how good he was and kind and patient, and all 
the rest of it, till you got up to go away. The best 
thing you could do was to get up and go away. You 
need have no compunction about it, for she would be 
sure to find some one else to continue her dissertations 
to, and, if all other audience failed her, she had 
always the maid in the kitchen to fall back upon. 
Dientje couldn’t escape. 

To Joris this eloquent adoration was anything but 
agreeable, though he was quite willing to bask in its 
warmth as long as it remained dumb. The good 


14 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


fellow knew perfectly well that he was not more 
estimable or more eminent than the average of his 
contemporaries, and he was possessed by that abso- 
lute terror of seeming ridiculous which sways all 
emotions of the masculine mind. He implored his 
mother sometimes not to sing his praises too loudly. 
But he did not like her to pit her opinion against 
his. 

Not even when she said he was infallible, and he 
denied it. 

She looked after all his bodily comforts as if he had 
been a race-horse. She mended his linen, and aired 
it and kept it in apple-pie order. For years he had 
not found a button off any article of underclothing or 
a hole in the soles of his boots. She warmed his 
slippers for him every evening, and in the winter she 
thermometered his room all day. If he sneezed, she 
doctored him. But he had a good constitution, and 
was able to support being cured. 

And now we have come to the weakest of Joris 
Middelstum’s weaknesses. It was a foible which is 
apt to accentuate itself in bachelors, but it dies away 
in married men, for young wives nip it in the bud, if 
it only dare to show itself again in the springtime of 
their married life. 

It must be confessed that Joris was inordinately 
particular about all that he ate and drank. 

We lay our fingers here upon a tender spot. Alas, 
our pleasant vices ! There is none which so soon 
grows into a scourge for the offender as this trained 
delicacy of the palate. And Joris had cause enough 
to learn that fateful truth in after years. 

Not simple gluttony. That is comparatively harm- 
less, and has a tendency to burn itself out, like its 
offspring, gout. And as often as it puts forth its 
demands, it can always obtain satisfaction for them. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


15 

The poorest beggar can indulge his gluttonous tastes, 
if you give him sixpence. He will find it possible to 
buy as many simply “nice"’ things — sweet things, 
rich things, things overripe and indigestible — ^for that 
modest sum as any human appetite can desire. 

But it is the delicate, tenderly-shaded appreciation 
of what is better than good which becomes the source 
of so much misery to its owner. There are people 
who see no intervening shade between violet and 
purple. They can always find stuffs to match the 
stuffs they have already. 

And there are people who can enjoy no “ ensemble ” 
whatsoever, unless the harmony of its component 
parts be complete. They always taste or feel imme- 
diately where the too much or the too little comes in. 
And the perception is often a positive pain to them — 
and, when it is not a pain, it is at least an annoyance. 
They cannot enjoy a scene out of one of Moliere’s 
Louis XIV. pieces, if one of the actors happen to have 
Louis XV. boots on, however fine the acting may be, 
and still less can they, in making a call, should they 
happen to be attired in green, sit themselves down in 
a blue easy-chair. It would make them ill. And 
rightly. 

Woe betide these unfortunates, if their sensitiveness 
alight on the tongue. And it is almost sure to do so, 
for the spot is predisposed. The disease is incurable 
there. 

I do not know why it should be so, but women are 
seldom fastidious. They are far less so than men. 
They are much more immoderate, and fastidiousness 
and want of moderation cannot go together. A 
woman may be greedy, and eat too much — she 
habitually does — and she may be unreasonable and 
want to have pearls dissolved in her champagne, or a 
^lice of the moon spread out on her bread and butter, 


i6 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


but she will swallow her favourite dish, whether it is 
underdone or overdone, smoked, salted or greased. 
She cannot understand her husband’s complaint that 
It is not as it ought to be.” True, she wouldn’t if 
she could. But, for the life of her, I don’t believe she 
can. Sweets are sweet to her, and the fat of the 
earth is fat. And more is always better than enough. 
If she learns that her young husband’s favourite dish 
is baked macaroni with rasped ham, she will set it 
before him with radiant face, only she will have told 
cook to leave out the ham and insert the remnants of 
the lunch tongue instead. ‘ ‘ He won’t notice the 
difference,” she says. Bless her little heart. I don’t 
think there ever was a woman yet who had a favourite 
dish. Ask her, and she will give you half a dozen. 
To have more than one is to have none. 


Oh, the little more, and how much it is, 

And the little less, and what worlds away ! 

Mevrouw Middelstum knew that. And, woman 
though she was, she set herself to learn to cook, and 
to appreciate cookery, as if she had been a man. 
She descended into her kitchen — a very rare thing 
with even middle-class Dutch housewives — and — still 
rarer innovation— she surprised Dientje by preparing 
delicacies for her son with her own hands. At such 
moments she forgot how genteel she was. 

The foolish woman educated Joris up to the con- 
summation of his own ruin. For by nature he would 
have taken his dinner as God sent it up to him, and 
broken his bread with thanks. But he had in him a 
predisposition to a certain refinement of taste, and he 
soon began to distinguish between his mother’s con- 
coctions and Dientje’s unaided efforts. And this ten- 
dency to discriminate sealed his fate. For the old 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


17 

lady, unwisely exultant over the preference shown to 
her handiwork, took the management of the kitchen 
almost entirely into her own hands, and superintended 
where she did not co-operate. She literally pandered 
to the poor fellow’s tastes. In her anxiety to reward 
him for his stay-at-home life with her, she created 
whims in him which his own innocence would never 
have developed. She accustomed him, for instance, 
to an exact mixture of black and green tea with the 
faintest flavouring of orange leaves, and having gradu- 
ally convinced him of the excellency of this mixture, 
she triumphed in her heart with fierce triumph, when 
he said to her, on coming home from some unavoid- 
able visit : ‘‘Their tea made me feel quite unwell, 
mother. I can’t drink any other tea than yours. ” 

As of tea, so of everything. She had her own little 
peculiar turn or twist about most compound eatables 
and drinkables, and Joris naturally fell into the habit 
of preferring things as he was accustomed to get 
them. And her cookery was good cookery. But the 
work she did was, unwittingly, an evil work. For, 
from merely being a young man, of refined tastes, 
Joris fast settled down into the most fastidious of 
bachelors. 

In how far did she act unwittingly ? She was a 
shrewd woman in many things, barring her adoration 
of Joris. And she liked her son and her life with her 
son too well to contemplate the irruption of a daughter- 
in-law with any great measure of contentment. It 
was evident that the secret of keeping a man quiet is 
to keep him comfortable. Mevrouw Middelstum de- 
voted her life to making such a nest for Joris that he 
would hardly care to fly away. 

“And, after all,” she reasoned, “what wife would 
take better care of him than I ? ” She summed up all 
the unhappy couples she could remember. And the 

2 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


l8 

length of the list exonerated her from any self-accusa- 
tions of egotism. And I must say I agree with her. 
Whenever I read in the newspapers that a husband 
has killed his wife, I find the statement tacked on by 
the editor that the cause was jealousy. But I do not 
believe the newspapers. Jealousy may have brought 
on the final crash, but — depend on it — it was the 
cookery that began the row. 

So the demon of daintiness entered into Middelstum’s 
simple soul. I can see the old lady in my mind’s eye, 
ushering him in with many smiles and curtseys. 

Nothing was too good for Joris,” she said. And at 
last Joris thought also, without knowing that he 
thought it, that nothing but the very best was good 
enough for him. “ Ah, but my Joris,” repeated the 
fond creature, “has such a very delicate palate.” 
Joris would have been ashamed to say that his palate 
was coarse. So he refined it yet more, and went on 
teaching it shades of distinction, till even his mother 
began to have doubts whether he wasn’t “almost 
over-particular. ” 

He was a bachelor. All bachelors — poor “out-in- 
the-colds ” — run the risk of these futile attempts to 
brighten their joyless existence. Not all of them have 
a mother who can so well dissemble the futility. 

Had any one thought of Joris Middelstum’s possible 
future wife, it would surely have been with a feeling 
of grim commiseration. 

But nobody thought of her. For Joris Middelstum 
was born a bachelor, and a bachelor he intended to 
die. 

And so life might have gone on forever, in the 
seemingly smooth perfection of all material comforts. 
There was no reason, as far as Joris could see, why 
all things should not be arranged for the best in the 
very best of worlds. If there ever happened to be a 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


19 

hitch, it was always due to somebody’s inattention. 
He was not unkind in his judgments, far from it. He 
abhorred scolding. He could not have scolded any 
one. All the scoldings of life were done for him by 
his mother. 

No wonder that the recipient of so much coddling 
and petting felt aggrieved when it all came to an end. 

Yet Mevrouw Middelstum’s death, like her life, was 
a tribute of affection to her son. For she ran out one 
stormy winter evening, after his second sneeze — an 
evening when their only maid-servant had gone for 
her weekly holiday — ran out to the chemist’s round 
the corner to get him some cough lozenges. And 
next morning it was she who wanted the cough 
lozenges, and soon it became evident that all the 
cough lozenges in the world would not stop her 
coughing. Joris was confounded, distracted, yet, 
withal, equal to the occasion. He nursed her through 
three rapid days of complete subsidence — un effondre- 
merit , — nursed her with a quiet desperation of devo- 
tion, which proved that in him also, despite his 
masculine selfishness, lay hid an element of his 
mother’s unreasoning self-sacrifice. 

On the third evening, he was sitting reading by the 
green shade of the petroleum lamp, — the same page 
had lain unopened before him for the last ten minutes 
although the book was the latest number of the Berlin 
Entomological Review. In fact, he was watching 
the clock-hands work their way round to the patient’s 
evening dose. Presently the old lady stirred, and 
coughed querulously. He got up and softly ap- 
proached the bed. 

She looked at him, with an expression which brought 
the hot tears into the eyes of this middle-aged govern- 
ment functionary. Evidently she was making vain 
efforts to speak. He would have raised her, but she 


! 


20 A QUESTION OF TASTE, ] 

motioned to him to desist. Once more she struggled 
painfully, and groaned. He bent down, the stalwarlj 
man, and as her lips almost met his ear : I 

“Joris,” she whispered, so feebly that he caught 
the general meaning more than the individual words^ 
‘‘ you won’t forget to have your clean things aired on 
Saturdays.” 

He pressed her hand. A shadow of repose crept 
over her worn-out face. And so she died J 


■1 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


2 \ 


CHAPTER III. 

BORN AND BRED A BACHELOR. 

JoRis Middelstum sat in front of his glowing stove, 
his elbows on his knees, his chin in the palms of his 
hands. He was meditating. And his meditations 
were of the colour of the stove pipe, and not of the 
stove. For the stove was glowing, and his thoughts 
were gloomy. 

His mother had now been dead five months. She 
had died in November. And this was a Sunday in 
March. 

It was a dreary Sunday. The rain which had been 
gathering all the morning had made up its mind in 
the early afternoon that it might as well come down. 
And therefore it had done so, in a gentle, continuous 
drizzle, as if it were anxious to show that it was not 
its intention to break the Sabbath by any violent 
exertion. 

It had driven Joris Middelstum indoors again, just 
as he was starting for a solitary walk he knew not 
whither, and he knew not why. 

Perhaps it was this very aimlessness of his depart- 
ure from the house which increased his irritation 
when he found himself unceremoniously turned back. 
For it is doubly provoking, after you have long 
hesitated and at last attired yourself for a supereroga- 
tory constitutional, to discover that you are stopped 
by the weather, just as if you were on an errand of 


22 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


duty. He felt, also, that it should have rained half 
an hour earlier, or not rained at all. 

And he was still further annoyed by the considera- 
tion that so many Sundays were rainy in one’s life. 
It seemed to him that every Sunday had been rainy 
since his mother died. He counted them up. As he 
went further back, he got confused, and reckoned the 
same Sunday twice. He hastened to the conclusion 
that the winter was execrable in Holland, and that 
there had never yet been so bad a winter as this. 

He had not been to church. Few Dutchmen ever 
go there, and he was not one of the few. Undoubt- 
edly this is largely the fault of the Calvinist ministers, 
who will persist in spreading their own ‘ ‘ diffusions ” 
of an hour and a half or so over a service which often 
lasts two hours. 

The day, therefore, had seemed long to him. In- 
stead of enjoying his rest, as formerly, he missed the 
Office. In the morning, after getting up late and find- 
ing the water off the boil, he had drawn a coat of 
arms, which he had long been in search of to com- 
plete his mother’s quarterings. His friend Romeyn 
had brought it him yesterday. He had worked it 
out in water-colours, and he had been more than 
usually successful, and satisfied with his design. And 
then, when he had quite finished it and was eye- 
ing it with paternal contentment, the recollection had 
suddenly fallen upon him that there was no one left 
to show it to. He was not the kind of man to tear up 
his work in a sudden passion, but he pushed it away 
from him impatiently, so that it whisked off the table 
to the floor. However, he was a Dutchman, and he 
went and picked it up again. 

He could not help realising how his mother would 
have enjoyed the discovery of this particular coat. 
She would never see her quarterings completed now, 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


23 

the quarterings on which he had spent so many cosy 
evenings of tranquil labour. It had not been very 
easy to ferret out the requisite information on Mev- 
rouw Middelstum’s father’s side ; hence the delay 
which might have become eternal, but for Romeyn’s 
discovery of a rampant lion, whose similarity of name, 
even should he happen to be spurious, would enable 
him to pass muster as the genuine article. 

How the old lady would have chuckled and chortled 
over this acquisition, and how eagerly and admiringly 
she would have watched the development of his 
work. 

Nobody had ever admired his performances since 
his mother died. And that was now nearly five 
months ago. 

It is all very well to talk about stupid vanity, but 
you try having the cockles of your heart warmed with 
mathematical precision every day before you go out 
to your day’s work, and after you come in from it, and 
then see what you will say when Fortune suddenly 
freezes the pipes. 

And, really, he did not care so much for the ad- 
miration, spoilt as he was. It was the sympathy he 
felt he could not do without. He had never reasoned 
out while she yet lived, how that sympathy lapped 
him in cheerfulness, coddled him, turned him over, 
and tucked him in. And the more he missed her, in 
big things and in little, the more his memory idealized 
and beautified all she had been for him. Not that he 
had put ■ loving her till her death. Far from it. In 
spite of her efforts to ruin his good-heartedness, he 
had always been the -lost affectionate and most duti- 
ful of sons. He had done, what a man never does, 
unless he loves very deeply, — he had shown his love 
in little things. A thousand daily trifles of forethought 
had told her that he studied her likes and dislikes. 


24 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


No, he had never been a selfish man. Even his 
mother had not been able to make him that. 

But his love had been plain, honest, unsentimental 
love, such as a man bestows on a woman who is 
good to him, with an admixture of that filial reverence 
which even the nineteenth century cannot stamp out 
entirely in our hearts, my dear fellow fin-de~siecle s, 
if only we happen to have got hold of the right kind 
of mother. But he had not canonized his sweet saint 
while she was alive. People don't. Now, the lights 
and shadows had fallen differently, changed by that 
wondrous hand of Death, which leaves the picture 
just the same, only entirely different, more luminous, 
more serenely, purely lovely, and yet not more love- 
ly than before. More clearly transparent because of 
the nimbus that veils it. Strange, solemn contradic- 
tion ! Blessed, blessed truth ! 

He had canonized her now. Can you wonder at it, 
when you remember that his thoughts must incessantly 
turn from the contemplation of her life to the recollec- 
tion of the cause of her death. He understood fully now 
the measure of her self-sacrifice. He did not pretend 
to have fathomed it before. For the wheels of his 
life had been oiled so assiduously that he had often 
overlooked the fact that someone was busy with the 
oiling. And now, perceiving constantly, as he must 
inevitably do, little levers and screws which he had 
not noticed before they got clogged, he fell into that 
extreme of self-reproach which is a weakness of gen- 
erous natures, and upbraided himself unreasonably 
for having defrauded the machinist of his hire. The 
more severely he censured his own conduct, the more 
vehemently, of course, did he glorify his mother's. 
She became to him the ideal, not of all mothers 
only, but of all women. It was useless to compare 
other females to her. He did not even do so, 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


25 

because he knew beforehand that it would be use- 
less. 

And so he lived in solitude. And, although his 
mourning coat was already getting shabby — shabbier 
than her watchful brush would have allowed it to be- 
come — the tears had gathered in his eyes as he sat by 
the stove on this miserable Sunday. 

He got up and walked to the window. It was 
drizzling steadily. Where should he have gone to, if 
it had not drizzled ? He sighed. He objected to its 
drizzling all the same. He went back to his seat by 
the fire. 

Dientje had made the room far too hot. She was 
always making it too hot. She had a most vivid im- 
pression that she must look after her orphaned mas- 
ter. And so she always heated the stove beyond en- 
durance. She hoped in vain for some sign of appro- 
val. For she was very anxious that he should think 
well of her, and she did all she could to melt his heart. 
She succeeded in melting something about him, un- 
deniably, but it was not his heart. 

She had found her defunct mistress’s thermometer, 
which she had never been allowed to touch during 
that lady’s life. Thermometers were a great mystery 
to Dientje, and this one soon grew, upon personal ac- 
quaintance, into a continual source of vexation. She 
struggled with it from morning to evening. She 
fought it. And still the thermometer came off victo- 
rious. For Dientje knew that the room was all right, if 
the thermometer marked sixty-five degrees. That is 
to say, she believed that the thermometer must begin 
by marking sixty-five degrees, if you wanted to get 
your room all right. And so she put her thumb upon 
the ball of mercury; for she soon discovered that by 
so doing you obtained the desired effect. But it cha- 
grined her in her soul to see that wretched thing come 


26 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


sliding down again as soon as she let it go. She ap- 
pealed to its sense of fitness ! How could she light 
the stove and hold the thermometer ? And what was 
the use of the thermometer if it refused to help the 
stove ? “ Warmth-meters are all very well/' said 

Dientje — they call them warmth-meters in Dutch — , 
“ but they don't warm the room, unless there’s two 
of you." She regretted the old days, when her mis- 
tress had held the machine, while she saw to the 
fire. 

She was ingenious, however, and not easily baffled. 
And she soon seized upon the simple expedient of 
placing the instrument on the stove. She found that 
it marked the requisite number of degrees far sooner 
in this way than in any other. And Joris suffered 
silent abysses of cold, till, fortunately one morning it 
came tumbling off in a myriad of tiny silver specks 
over the sitting-room floor. 

Dientje fruitless hunt after the mercury is graven for 
ever in the hardest tablets of her memory. She now 
knows — what she only guessed at before — that the 
thingummy was alive. She still believes it was a 
means of producing heat, and she is bent upon show- 
ing her employers that a good servant can warm a 
room sufficiently without it. 

She is no longer in Joris Middelstum's employ, but 
she entirely succeeded in convincing him of the 
accuracy of this view, before she left it. 

“ Was Dientje stupider than other servants ?" he asked 
himself, as he sat broiling at the farther end of the 
room. He had vainly moved away from the stove, 
as its fury increased upon him. It was an American 
machine, and he had not the slightest idea how to 
manage it. He knew that his mother had always been 
loud in its praise because of its equable temperature, 
but he knew also that if you once overheated it, it 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


27 


must burn its way out to the bitter end. At the office, 
a doorkeeper kept his grate replenished. And Joris 
was one of those males who prefer any privation to 
the bother of attending to a stove. There are only 
two classes of men with regard to this matter : the 
man who can’t leave the fire alone, and the man who 
won’t look at it. 

He opened the window. But the cold came falling 
through it in a separate lump, and heat and cold re- 
fused absolutely to intermingle. And the damp danced 
attendance on the cold. He hated damp, because of 
his twinges of rheumatism. So he shut the window 
again. 

“Was Dientje stupider than other servants .? ” The 
question daily grew in interest to him. It had become 
a vital one. For if she really were — as he secretly 
suspected in his heart of heart — (Don’t say ‘ ‘ heart of 
hearts. ” It’s nonsense) — the very stupidest of all stupid 
domestic servants living and breathing in the length 
and breadth of Holland — then, perhaps, it might not 
be unadvisable to suggest a change. He turned al- 
ternately hot and cold, whenever he reached this con- 
clusion, and cast an uneasy glance at the door, as if 
she could hear his thoughts downstairs. 

She must be stupid, because he had never noticed 
that former servants made such hopeless idiots of them- 
selves. True, he had never noticed it of her, till after 
his mother’s death. And yet she had spent nearly 
three years in the house before that terrible catastro- 
phe. “I suppose she has degenerated,” he sighed. 
“ It is wonderful to think what a rapid process is de- 
generation in all nature.” His thoughts wandered 
away to his Essay on Earwigs, and then to the strange 
rebellion against taxes which one refusal to pay will 
sometimes suddenly call forth in a tax-enduring dis- 
trict. 


28 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


‘‘What a housekeeper she was ! he sighed. And 
his eyes rested tenderly on the large crayon drawing 
of the woman who had been, not only the sweetest 
of mothers, but also the sharpest of mistresses. 

And the beauty of this second quality had been that 
the parlour never noticed it. It remained, like the cul- 
inary apron, in the kitchen. 

Mevrouw Middelstum had never engaged first-rate 
servants, for she was bent upon remaining paramount 
in her own kitchen. But she manufactured them her- 
self, out of the raw material. Or rather, she manufact- 
ured first-rate serving machines. For, in the young 
girls she took into her house, she annihilated alLinitia- 
tive. The household was small ; her presence all- 
pervading. Everything went with clock-work regular- 
ity, but she never for one moment left off winding up. 
And Betje, the last red-cheeked maiden from the 
country, had run blindfold in her mill, like a good little 
donkey that she was. But when the “ gee-ups ’’ sud- 
denly sank into silence, and the bandage fell off 

Not a woman pitied Joris Middelstum, because he 
was nearly thirty-five and had remained a bachelor. 

There are some sins for which no punishment can 
be severe enough. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE- 


29 


CHAPTER IV. 

NEMESIS. 

No, I retract my original dedication. I dedicate this 
book to all the men who once were bachelors, and 
have repented. ... In sackcloth and ashes. 

“ I cannot understand,” said Joris to himself, “ how 
it is that some people would have us believe that all 
days are equally long. ” 

His glance wandered apprehensively to the clock. 
Slowly, in the deepening gloom of damp and darkness, 
the hands were gliding round towards the dinner-hour. 
But that supreme resting-point of consolation to a lazy 
soul on a lazy day beamed forth with no kindly prom- 
ise of approaching warmth. There are lazy days as 
well as lazy people, days that won’t hurry up and look 
alive, but that hang and drag and dawdle, however 
hard you may be working, along the drowsy, drippy 
sky with a dreary limp that makes the very clock stand 
still. Some clocks have a way of ticking solemnly, 
just as if they were marching on. But they’re not. 
They’re only humbugging you. They’re jumping from 
leg to leg, as the children do. Or the soldiers. I 
believe it is appropriately called “marking time.” 

The dentists buy that kind of clock. But some peo- 
ple’s timepieces only get the fit occasionally. Just as 
there are wives who scold all day, and wives who 
only scold in bed. My clock is taken bad on lazy 
days. And as we wander slowly upwards through 
the audible drip of the minutes, the distant lamp ot 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


30 

the dinner hour — like a glorious star — ^beckons en- 
couragingly. The wanderer rivets his closing eyes 
upon it, and, perchance, as he gazes, they fall to, and he 
is at rest. 

They say that life is short. I don’t deny it. But 
you try — not laziness ; I never was lazy — you try a 
lazy day. 

The finest day goes too fast, if you dawdle through 
it. All the faster, I think, for its beauty and its de- 
licious dawdling. 

But a lazy day ! Joris Middelstum looked at the 
clock again. Its hands had not visibly advanced, 
since he had last opened his eyes. How long ago 
was it since he had done so .? Ages ago, of that he 
felt confident. The clock — tick, tick — and the ram — 
drip, drip — he shook himself together — and if the 
clock — ^Jons Middelstum was fast asleep. 

He awoke with a stiff neck, and a generally dazed, 
headachy feeling. It was far too dark to think of 
finding out how late it was. And that, m itself, must 
be considered an indescribable comfort. If it was al- 
ready as dark as this, Dientje would soon be coming 
with lighted lamp. He got impatient and rang for 
her. And, after several minutes, Dientje appeared, 
carrying the light. “ I was just bringing it up as you 
rang,” she said. 

Then she retreated, soon to return with his dinner. 
Or, rather, she came back first for the necessary pre- 
liminaries and proceeded leisurely to lay the cloth. 

There is nothing, m all the borders of Christianity 
so exasperating to a sensitive man as to see a slightly 
awkward maid-servant lay out a dinner-table. By the 
time Dientje had dopped her second fork, he was in 
the front room, safe m the cold and dark. 

Thence she recalled him, when all was ready to 
the enjoyment ot his frugal meal, 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 3 1 

•^You needn’t wait,” he murmured, as he sank 
down in front of the soup tureen. “ I will ring.” 

The soup was his favourite one, clear chicken. He 
had ordered it himself the day before. He always 
treated himself to a little extra excellence on the day 
of rest. It was a time-honoured institution. His 
mother had begun it in his father’s day. 

He ladled a small quantity into his plate. And im- 
mediately a delicate tissue of ten thousand variegated 
circles spread over its surface, an exquisite tracery of 
lace-work, glittering with a changeful medley of pris- 
matic colours like soap bubbles, bright little bells of 
gossamer softness, that lay rapidly thickening, as 
they were reinforced from below. 

We all know it. It is what happens when the woman 
neglects to skim off the fat, or whatever the proper 
expression may be. I don’t know what is the proper 
expression, but I know it is the proper thing. 

Joris sat staring helplessly at the crust which was 
forming on his little soup-pond. It was steadying 
with astonishing rapidity, for to-day was one of the 
cool-plate days. Dientje alternated between an imper- 
ceptible dip on the plate-warmer, as of a bird in his 
flight, from kitchen to dining-room, and cracking. 

“Thermometer below zero,” said Joris, grimly. 
“ If they wait a few minutes the flies will be able to 
skate. ” 

He had not the heart to injure the good creature’s 
feelings by sending away his plate untouched. 

And, besides, she would be sure to ask, with a 
voice full of gentle protest, more in sorrow than in 
anger, yet not without a little anger, too, — whether 
there was anything wrong with the. soup. 

She would stand there, by the sicieboard, her hands 
folded in front of her, and she would wait for his an- 
swer. 


^2 A QUESTION OF TASTE. 

And what should he do or say, when she stood 
waiting thus ? 

He looked down at his plate. 

There were three things he could not swallow : 
Too much fat, too much sweet, too much sour. 

They gave him the heartburn, he said. And too 
much sweet, he pretended, had even more notable — 
and noticeable — effects. 

Some people, who have no palates, only tongues, 
will laugh at this tragi-comedy, and employ what they 
have, to abuse the poor man with too much gust. 

And yet his dilemma was a very real one. He had 
not eaten a badly cooked thing for years until his 
mother died. And now he seldom got anything 
else. 

Very few of us have had his previous experience. 
Very few, therefore, can fathom his loss. 

There is that story of the citizen of Bagdad who 
brought a present of pure, sweet water to the chief of 
a desert tribe. And all the ladies of the community 
cried out against him for despising their brackish fluid, 
when their husbands drank nothing else, and the ladies 
went down to the spring to get it. And they turned 
the stranger out, and sent him back to Bagdad with a 
scratched face. 

You will find the story, I believe, in some editions 
of the “ Arabian Nights,” if you hold the book upside 
down. 

I retract the dedication at the head of my chapter. 
No married man ought to read this book. 

Poor Joris. His conscientiousness forbade him to 
throw away food. He could not break one of his 
mother’s primary rules, under the kindly eyes of the 
crayon-drawing. 

Besides, the lady in the kitchen would be sure to 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


33 

hear the thud in the garden. And, as for the coal- 
scuttle, the grease was too greasy. 

Necessity is the mother of invention. Surely, if 
that be true, the necessity of inventing a new saw for 
so old a truth should render some aphorisfs brain 
prolific. Necessity pointed to a large empty cocoa- 
tin standing on the sideboard. And invention poured 
into it, not only Joris’s plateful, but as much more as 
the cylinder would hold. 

And then the guilty man fastened down the lid and 
tied a long string to it. And he slunk into the dark 
front room and opened the window and looked out. 

No beggar ! 

He was only some ten feet from the ground. Area 
or intervening garden there was none. Only the nar- 
row pavement, and the slushy road. He softly low- 
ered his little pannikin, swinging it towards the middle 
of the road, and let go the string. And then he sprang 
merrily back to the dining-room and rang the bell. 

The kitchen was at the back of the house. He felt 
that he was safe. And his conscience rewarded him 
for having performed two good actions at once — 
“killed two flies by one blow,” they say in Holland. 
For he had fed the hungry as well as charitably treated 
the feeble. 

And Dientje brought in his second course. It was a 
beefsteak in Madeira sauce. Mushrooms, a favourite 
seasoning of his, he had given up five months ago. 
P'or he still loved life. 

‘ ‘ Glad to §ee the soup was tasty. Mynheer, ” said 
Dientje with a sly glance at the half-empty tureen. 

For Dientje’s conscience had smitten her. She had 
been out to afternoon church — Dutchwomen go — and 
instead of coming home straight as she ought to have 
done, she had run round to see an aunt’s bad leg. 
She had run round, from no feeling of sympathy, but 
3 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


34 

because her sister had told her before service that the 
doctor had said the leg would not be so bad to-mor- 
row. So she went on first exhibition-day, as it were, 
just as people do for a flower-show, with that relish 
for the disgusting so common to her class. She had 
stayed out too late to get dinner properly. 

Joris did not answer her. He was of opinion that 
politeness rarely sanctions a lie. 

He cut his beefsteak, as soon as she was gone, and 
tasted it. He was feeling really hungry by this time. 
Nevertheless, he put down his knife and fork. 

After all he was no coward. He was a man — a 
what d'ye call it ? — a lord of creation. Had he known 
of Dientje’s misdoings, he would not have been so 
long-suffering. But long-suffering has its limits. He 
rang the bell. 

Somebody is thinking that no man would have 
borne as much. I can see it on his face as we sit by 
the fire and I tell my story. He thinks my friend 
Joris a “softy.” But my friend Joris is by no means 
a “softy,” as I will prove to anyone who will come 
and stay with me in my own country, where you can 
meet him as often as you like. You should have 
heard Joris “slate,” one of the juniors at the Office. 
But even there he clung to his practice of striving to 
avoid giving pain. 

“Will you kindly look through this document again, 
Mynheer. The cursory attention I am able to bestow 
upon it has led me to very different ciphers from 
yours. It is possible I may be mistaken, but I should 
wish you to give me an explanation of my mistakes.” 

The accentuation of these amiable words, and the 
sweep of the hand in returning the paper, were things 
to be remembered by the culprit, with a blush, in the 
dead of night. 

Yes, he strove to avoid giving pain. Especially, as 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


35 

long as he thought it was undeserved. And he was 
dreadfully frightened of petticoats. And still more 
inimitably frightened of possible pocket-hankerchiefs. 

Nevertheless, he now rang the bell. So sharply 
that Dientje came up empty-handed. 

‘ ‘ What have you put on that beefsteak ? ” he asked, 
severely. 

Dientje’s face fell. 

“You had better tell me,” he continued, even more 
severely still. 

And then Dientje threw herself upon his mercy. 
“There was no more out,” she began piteously. 
“ And I didn’t like to disturb you. And I thought you 
would be certain and never notice. La, Mynheer, 
what a beautiful taste you have got, to be sure ! ” 

Ah, daughters of Eve, there never yet was one of 
you so stupid — and the stupid ones are rare enough. 
Heaven knows — but it would have been better had 
she been less sly. 

“You had better tell me,” he repeated, pitilessly. 
“ What was it you put over that beefsteak .? ” 

“ Rum ! ” she wailed, wringing her hands. ‘ ‘ The 
very best Jamaica rum ! One florin eighty a bottle. 
And I got it at the grocer’s round the corner ! ” 

He gave her a look. One look. And then he 
passed her, and went down into the little entrance hall, 
and put on his hat and coat, and walked out into the 
rain. 

And Dientje watching him from the landing, saw 
the front-door sink into its frame with a click. And 
then she sat down on the stairs, and lifted up her voice 
and wept. 


3<5 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


CHAPTER V. 

THE MAJOR, THE CAPTAIN, AND THE RANK AND FILE. 

^‘Yes, the Major is an excellent woman,” said Cap- 
tain Trommels, as he sipped his little thimble-full of 
cognac. “I don’t know a more excellent woman, 
though I say it myself, who shouldn’t, considering 
she’s my own sister. I couldn’t wish for a better 
mother-in-law for my son Anton, if I didn’t disapprove 
of marriages between cousins.” 

“A fine, uncle,” said his nephew, quietly. And he 
held out his hand. 

“Nonsense,” replied the old officer, taking a few 
quick puffs at his cigar. “ I won’t put up with your 
tyranny, lad. I won’t put up with it, I tell you. I 
distinctly refuse to. What business have you to 
make rules for me to break ? ” 

“It wasn’t I. It was Ada, ” obj ected Alfred Romeyn . 

‘ ‘ And you know you consented. Whoever mentioned 
the word marriage except in my mother’s presence 
should pay a fine. Why did you say : ‘Yes,’ uncle ? ” 

“ I should like to see who could say ‘ No’ to the 
little puss,” grumbled the old fire-eater, behind his big 
moustachios. ‘ ‘ I’m sure, it’s a mercy that the asking 
don’t come from them, or we shouldn’t have a free 
agent left in the army. It don’t take civilians so bad, 
I always fancy. Zounds, boy, in my time there 
wasn’t a man of honour who would have dared to say 
‘No’ to a girl.” 

“The girls must have been a good lot better then,” 


A QUESTION- OF TASTE. 


37 

answered the young cynic, ^‘or the race couldn’t have 
stood the strain. ” 

“Don’t be witty at the expense of your belief in 
women, Fred,” said the warrior, solemnly, eyeing his 
glass with a meditative air. “Never be that. Besides, 
you don’t mean it. The two women whom you know 
best, and who spoil you out of all moral shape, you 
young blackguard, are as good as a daily sermon to 
you on feminine virtue — or they ought to be.” 

“I don’t like sermons, uncle. Beside*, you owe 
me twopence. I shall tell Ada if you refuse to pay. ” 

‘ ‘ I most decidedly refuse to pay. That is to say, 
on compulsion. I cannot allow my freedom of speech 
to be controlled by two such impertinent youngsters. 
Nevertheless, I don’t object to contributing my mite 
once in a way towards so deserving an institution as 
the Home for Unmarried Invalid Soldiers,” — and he 
felt laboriously under his rounded waistband with 
much reddening of his already brick-coloured face, till 
at last he succeeded in extracting a small silver bit — 
a “ double-penny ” from the depths of some mysterious 
store. 

“Quite so,” said Alfred, with a thin smile over his 
sharp features. He was a pale, intelligent-looking 
youth, not much over twenty, in whose dark eyes you 
read the tale of continuous- — and not always over- 
kindly- — observation of men and things. By profes- 
sion he was a journalist. “That is to say,” said his 
mother, bitterly, “he has no profession at all.” 

For his mother — the Major — knew only the learned 
professions and the King’s uniform. Beyond was 
‘ ‘ trade. ” And even of the professions she was wont 
to say : ‘ ‘ The only service that doesn’t disgrace a 
man is the service of his sovereign.” She was very 
military, in the midst of an unmartial and reposeful 
people. And as often happens with these soldierly 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


38 

ladies, she was not only military but also decidedly 
militant. This we shall have sufficient cause to per- 
ceive. For her son Alfred knew it, and so did her 
daughter Ada, and so did her good brother, the Cap- 
tain. 

Her father, old “Blazes Trommels,” as they called 
him in the service, on account of his gunpowder 
explosions of passion, had been a lieutenant-colonel 
of dragoons. Alas, there are no more dragoons in 
Holland nowadays ! Her husband, one of her brother's 
friends, had been a major. She had married him 
chiefly because he had asked her, and because she 
could not disgrace her brother s regiment by letting 
its major go about, a publicly rejected man. “If ho. 
had kept it to himself, ” she used to say, ‘ ‘ I don't know 
what might not have happened. But I knew he had 
told a lot of his chums, and I hadn't the heart to 
affront the boys.” 

That was the version she always gave in after years 
when she wanted to punish her husband. She never 
confessed in how far she had bullied him into asking 
her. And he 

Well, I will only say, that if he ever commanded any- 
thing or anybody, it must have been outside his house. 
The first independent thing he did within its walls 
was to die there. And even for that he had his wife's 
leave. 

He was a soldier, you see, and a soldier's life is 
obedience, for even his commands are only obedience 
passed on. Major Romeyn’s chief difficulty lay in 
the fact that he had to serve two masters, as well as 
he was able : the colonel — he was devoted to his 
family — and his wife, — he was devoted to the service. 
And Mevrouw, in spite of her admiration for the army, 
and her “ rule of life ” (as she called it) : “ Discipline 
must be,” she lived practically in smouldering rebel- 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


39 

lion (with eruptions) against the colonel and the 
colonel’s lady. For like most people who are strong 
in the verb “ to obey,” she preferred its passive form. 
It was one of the few forms in which she liked pas- 
sivity. 

They called her “ the Major” in the regiment, long 
before the official bearer of that title had received his 
discharge from King Death. We are always abusing 
that grim old warrior, but we are very ungrateful. 
We forget that most of us owe our nominations, and 
many of us our fortunes, to his kindly patronage. He 
has a weakness, of course, for elder sons (and here 
the affection is mutual) but he is good, in his own 
rough way to almost all of us. His action in this par- 
ticular case did not, however, make much difference 
in the outer circumstances of the family. They had 
a little less money than ever ; they had never had 
enough. A younger officer, — not so very young 
either, for the soldiers are as much hampered in their 
trades by peace as the doctors by prosperity — a younger 
officer slipped into the vacant regimental pigeon-hole, 
and the coloneless, whose figure had always gone 
down like a ninepin before the maj cress’s imperious 
bawl, faintly whispered to her most intimate friend 
that she was almost glad they were going to get rid 
of the widow. The intimate friend was, of course, 
‘‘silent as the grave,” and it is therefore difficult to 
comprehend what excuse the majoress could have 
adduced for perpetually referring to her rival as “A 
murderess who rejoiced over the corpses of the dead.” 
Yet she thus eloquently described her to her dying 
day. 

There was no change of government in the house- 
hold department. How seldom there is ! I have 
often thought that the Salic Law was a last desperate 
stand of the hunted and harassed will of the lord of 


40 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


the family. Not a compensation ; that were impos- 
sible, but a reprisal. Run to earth, in this virgin- 
forest of his authority, in which he had got so hope- 
lessly entangled, man ensconced himself in its in- 
most sanctuary and turned — they say worms will — 
on the relentless pursuer. In great things, he would 
keep the appearance of rule. And each man should 
at least be bullied by his own wife, and not by any- 
body else’s. For that is the real principle of the Salic 
Law, which is not only confined, as most people 
think, to kings and queens, whose wills are less inde- 
pendent than anybody’s, but even to us simple people 
who have wills of our own. In the countries where 
she was not omnipotent, woman was obliged to give 
way. And she did wisely, for now she sits demurely 
beside the throne, and spins. And man is a fool, asleep 
in his seat of government, with his pipe and his pot. 

There is an admirable Dutch saying which should 
find a corner here : Man may be the head of the 
family, but woman is the neck on which he turns. 

Don’t weep, poor meek-willed, weak-willed sufferer, 
don’t weep over your humiliating lot. You would 
weep all the harder if she went away and left you, 
and you had to look after yourself. 

I — the bachelor who writes this book — I knew a 
man and wife who were touchingly attached to each 
other — as close as close could be. And one evening the 
wife felt bad, and talked about fading away and 
‘ ‘ when I shall be no more. ” And suddenly the lov- 
ing husband burst out, almost fiercely with “Good 
heavens, you’re not going to leave me alone with the 
washing, and the servants, and all the things ! ” 

That’s how they do, the egotists, grumbling at the 
daily meal, so carefully set before them, because they 
have not been allowed to order the particular things 
which always disagree with them. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


41 


Joris Middelstum stood in the street, uncertain what 
to do, yet not liking the drizzle. 

He was but a five months’ bachelor, in fact, for 
before that time he had only 'been a bachelor in 
name. 

It might almost seem a matter of regret that Adam 
could not have gone on living with his mother. A 
good deal of subsequent unpleasantness would have 
been avoided in that way. 

Presently a smilp of recognition came over Joris’s 
tormented featuref?. The name of a well-known 
restaurant dawned upon his memory. He plunged 
into the mist. Ah, ye avengers of the frying-pan, 
there are cities of refuge in Israel yet ! 

But poor dead Major Romeyn had been forgotten by 
everybody, long before I made the acquaintance of 
Joris Middelstum. 

By everybody but his daughter Ada, who was the 
only person to regret him, perhaps because she was 
the only person whoihad lost by his death. 

For Mevrouw hadf not lost, not even pecuniarily. 
She had a little less ^ money, but then her expenses 
were also less. V 

]\Iajor Romeyn ha4 loved his only daughter with 
that tender solicitude, which reaches its fullest 
development in henpecked patres familias. Why 
these unfortunates should be so especially gentle to 
their female offspring it would be difficult to explain, 
unless we may suppose that they share, with pro- 
phetic enjoyment, that ^ommon instinct of the race 
which desires companiAis in its sorrows. However 
this may be, the major spoiled his daughter. And the 
daughter liked being spoiled. 

A little indulgence, mqreover, wouldn’t hurt her. It 
did very well as an antidote. For when you’ve a 
martial mother, you leanV to require a little fondness 


•i 


42 


A (QUESTION OF TASTE. 


from the other side. Mevrouw Romeyn practised 
even more on her daughter than on her son the golden 
rule that ‘ ‘ discipline must be. ” I don’t fancy she beat 
her. She was too strict a disciplinarian to render that 
necessary. It is not the sternest rulers who have 
to quell rebellion by shooting their subjects in the 
street. 

If the woman had a weakness, it was for her boy. 
We can understand that it should have been so. For 
we are all of us accustomed to crossing — quite as 
much as to being crossed — in love. 

She had always expected Alfred to go into the army, 
“ to inherit the army,” as she styled it. Her brother, 
the captain, had always expected it. Everybody had 
expected it. Her circle was small, and she enlargedt 
it, by talking of ‘ ‘ everybody. ” But the world was 
doomed to disappointment, as the young man himself 
said with a sneer. He was not a bad fellow, but he 
sneered too much. Sneering is a nasty thing in the 
young. In the old it doesn’t matter, because we 
know it can be accounted for by the teeth falling oulfi 
But Alfred had low tastes. He wrote poetry, and he 
associated with men who let their hair grow long." 
Fie was a great grief to his mother. 

Probably it was she who should be considered to 
blame for his sneering ways. For he had early 
learned to oppose silence to her roar of indigna- 
tion, and the silence had quite naturally curled itself 
into a smile of scorn, as soon as he was past the 
age of manual assault. The gentleman who lives 
with a virago almost always ends by quietly sitting 
down among the scorners. She can’t get at him 
there. . 

Son and daughter were twenty-one and nineteen. 
Son was slender, sallow, and thoughtful. He wrote 
articles in several newspapers and reviews. For these 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


43 


he received, to use an inelegant but graphic expres- 
sion, more kicks than halfpence, there being no country- 
in the world in which literature is so hopelessly in 
disgrace and disgust as in Holland. It is not veiy 
highly honoured anywhere, perhaps, but nowhere 
else does it expose its enthusiasts to such depths of 
poverty and insult. The social position must be 
beyond all reproach of the daring individual who 
would venture to stretch out his fingers and touch its 
pitchy shrine. Alfred Romeyn’s position was not 
sufficiently assured. His mother was right to be 
angry with him. She was very right. 

Daughter was a good-hearted, good-tempered girl, 
a little cowed by her mother s overbearing manner. 
But you can’t be very dismal at nineteen, if your 
health is good. Ada Romeyn’s health was excellent. 
Her face was comely, too, with a bright, blue-eyed, 
fresh-coloured prettiness, and she had that pleasant 
type of yellow hair which doesn’t look cold, as is the 
rule, but warm, because of the under-current of light 
in it. She was indebted to her mother’s portly person 
for her comfortable air of cheerful well-being, but she 
had none of the elder lady’s magnificent hardness of 
heart and features. On the contrary, there was a shy 
look in Ada’s eyes which seemed to say : “ Don’t be 
disagreeable. There’s enough people disagreeable 
without you.” “ The Major ” was very disagreeable. 
She settled all her bad temper on her luckless scape- 
kid. The kid disapproved of her mother’s system, 
and the remembrance of her fathers leniency grew 
fairer by contrast. Only daughters are a capital in- 
vention, but mothers of only daughters are a decided 
mistake. They are either too fond or — far more 
frequently— just the reverse. “ There’s no one makes 
so good an heiress as an only daughter, Jons Middel- 
stum used to say. 


44 ^ QUESTION OF TASTE, 

Cynical? Well, never mind, he married a p 
girl himself. 

Ada Romeyn had one pleasure in her life whid 
not vouchsafed to all girls. Her cousin Anton Trd ^ 
mels was in love with her. He had been in 1<’C 
with her for ever, and there was no reason why 
should leave off now they were grown up. He 1 
beautified her whole life from childhood upwa 
with a thousand little courtesies and kindnesses, 
had given her his sweets when she was three, 
toys when she was ten, flowers as she went to £ 
fro to school at fifteen, and, when she was confirn 
the other day at eighteen, he had bought her a he 
of gold for her wrist. Everybody knew about it, £ 
talked about it. His father objected to it a do: 
times a week, on the ground that he disapproved c 
marriage between cousins, but he objected so of 
that nobody believed him. Besides, he was kno' 
to adore Ada as the apple of his eye. He called 1 
‘ ‘ little puss. '' It was a very good name for h 
Her brother sometimes called her “little cat.” A 
sometimes that was a very good name for her, t( 
But yet she was one of those beings who do 
remember to use their claws, unless you remind th( 
they have got them. And some people always 
remind you. Alfred did. 

Her mother's objections were more serious. M( 
rouw Romeyn stated frankly — frankness was her o 
overwhelming vice — that Anton had one recommer 
ation — he was an officer like her father — and that 
had one disadvantage — he was poor like the rest 
them. The recommendation was positive, she woi 
not gainsay that, but the disadvantage was compai 
tive, for there are a few rich men in the army sti 
“The Major” had not even that virtue which aton 
torso many faults in the soldiers wife of forty yea 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


45 

ago. She loved money as much as if her husband 
had worn a warehouse apron instead of a braided 
coat. The ‘ ‘ gentlefolks ” of our age have forgotten 
thr t gentlefolks can be poor, and that is why the 
w( rd is old-fashioned and the class is dying out. For 
a poor noble who marries some rich tradesman's 
daughter doesn't make rich nobles, whatever the 
‘ ‘ Peerage ” may call his children. Mevrou w Romeyn 
had good blood in her — -of a sort. Good, honest, 
poor-soldier s blood. She ought to have been proud 
of her poverty ; but she wasn’t. She was only vain 
about it. And fussy. 

Anton Trommels was as simple and straightforward 
a young soldier as ever breathed. He was very fair — 
ludicrously fair, said Alfred — and very young. Well, 
he was twenty-two, but he looked as if he would 
never grow older. He did not tell people that he 
loved Ada, yet nevertheless, everybody knew it. He 
had never spoken on the subject to his cousin, but 
vhen the captain twitted him with it in the presence 
of strangers, he would blush, like a great six-feet-high 
rhilk-and-roses booby that he was. He was not 
over-clever, this true-hearted warrior, and, if the in- 
vention of gunpowder had depended upon his unaided 
efforts, it is probable that the English archers would 
still sweep the battlefields of Europe. 

Anton had gone into the drawing-room with the 
two ladies, immediately after dinner. He wanted 
Ada to try a new song he had brought her. For Ada 
sang. It can't be helped ; they will do it. And, at 
any rate, the singing of one temporarily slops the 
talking of the rest. 

Anton said she had the voice of an angel. 

And IMevrouw Romeyn said so too. Not that she 
knew anything about angels, but she always made a 
point of praising her daughter before strangers. For 


46 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


she believed that it doesn't matter about a house being 
divided against itself, as long as the fissures don't 
show on the outside. 

“My daughter Ada,” she told her gossips, “has 
the voice of an angel. Her cousin says so, and he is 
an excellent judge of music, even though in this case 
— oh, well, I won't vouch for his impartiality, you 
know. ” 

For she was one of those people who like you to 
know about it, before they dismiss a suitor. It saves 
the trouble of recurring to the subject afterwards, and 
looks nicer. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


47 


CHAPTER VI. 

HUMOURS OF LOVEMAKING. 

I I WISH you would sing it again/' said Anton. He 
I thought, with a sort of wohdering pity, of Alfred tied 
down by his duty as host to the Captain’s cigar and 
cognac glass. It is not on record whether Alfred 
would have appreciated this sentiment. A doubt 
seems permissible, for Alfred had his glass of cognac 
as well as the Captain. 

I And Ada sang it again. Her voice was fresh and 
! pleasant, like her face, but, like her face, it was simple, 
and not at all imposing. It was not nearly ethereal 
enough for an angel’s. Nor was the song, although 
a very innocent one, of the kind which angels are 
usually represented as singing. It was all about love 
and cruelty and desertion. Anton thought it was 
touchingly true. In the last verse the maiden an- 
nounced that the young gentleman had gone off to 
kill himself ‘ ‘ Ah, woman, woman ! ” said the infant 
fire-eater, “How lightly she sings it How true it 
is ! How true ! ” The cruel but unconscious maiden 
finished with a little run and a bang. Her heart was 
as little false as her music. She turned round with a 
bright smile to her cousin. But something in his boy- 
ish face made her stop short. She never took him 
quite seriously. He was her cousin, a lad of twenty- 
two. And she was a woman of nineteen. When we 
are young ladies, and do up our hair, and wear long 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


48 

dresses, we have a knack of forgetting that our boj 
cousins go on growing up. 

“ What nonsense it is ! ” she said, quickly. “ As if 
any woman in the world would sing out a laugh at 
the thought that a man had killed himself for her sake. ’’ 
Ah, btit they would ! ” said the officer, with untold 
volumes of tragedy in his voice. 

They Were not volumes of experience, however ; 
they were volumes from the circulating library, at six- 
pence a-piece. ^ 

‘ ‘ Indeed ! '' said Ada, with her fingers on tne keys. 
She had a graceful hand. “ Indeed \” she repeated. 
“And what do you know of the cruelty of ^omen, 
Anton T You, who have yourself confessed to me that 
you never made love to a woman in your life '' 

The slow sonorous breathing of the Major ihrilled 
solemhly through the silence, like the distant, far, far- 
distant echo of the cannon which she loved. 

“Never to anyone else,” whispered Anton, bending 
forward. “I made love to you, you remember, when 
we were children, and I don’t think I have ever quite 
left off.” ^ 

“ And that doesn’t count,” she answered, still finger- 
ing the piano, “ because you mean nothing. . Or 
should you have run away and killed yourself, Anton, 
had I refused your sweets ? Don’t pretend. I can see 
right through you, and you want to make me think 
you are a Don Juan, because you consider it looks 
well. You are irresistible, and you prove it by smil- 
ingly alluding to your wounds. You are a judge — are 
you not ? — of our weakness and our strength ? You 
have a vast experience — have you not ? — of women of 
all sorts ? ” 

‘ ‘ No, no, ” cried the horror-struck novice. ‘ ‘ No, no, 
I assure you. Not that.” 

“Well then, you see what a humbug you are! 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


49 

Don’t go in for sentimentalising, Anton. You can’t 
do it. You get the facts out of books, and then you 
impose on poor little me. Women aren’t cruel, I as- 
sure you. Alas, they are only too kind ! ” 

And she, in her turn, looked unconsciously senti- 
mental for a moment. But Anton did not laugh. 

The snoring had stopped. 

“ Billing and cooing ! ” cried the Captain, bursting 
in through the folding-doors. ‘ ‘ It’s no use, my dears, 
your making eyes at each other, because I entirely 
disapprove of all matches between cousins.” And 
stepping up to the piano on tiptoe, he threw his arm 
round his niece’s waist. 

“ Don’t, uncle,” cried that young lady, disengaging 
herself, “ You smell so of smoke ! ” She cast a half- 
vexed look at Anton, as much as to say : “You see 
how you both bore me with this nonsense, and what 
nonsense you both know it to be.” 

“ Where is Alfred ? ” interposed the Major, waking 
up, and settling her cap. She was very portly in her 
violet silk, and her hands and chin were plump. Peo- 
ple always answered the Major when she spoke. 
She was not one of those poor spiritless creatures who 
expected you to say : “ Beg pardon } ” 

“Alfred ran round to the office of ‘The Bumble- 
Bee ’ about some copy or other. He said he would 
only be gone twenty minutes,” replied the Captain, 
sheepishly. He stood in mortal dread of his sister, 
whom he vastly admired. When twitted with this 
docility, he would laughingly ask how he could do 
otherwise than yield submission to his superior officer.? 
And the idea was not altogether fanciful, for his sister, 
as acting major, had exercised a very actual authority 
in her day over her brother, who was only a lieuten- 
ant. And even now, several years after the one had 
been cashiered and the other had retired, her influence 
4 


50 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


was overpoweringly great. “He is out,” said the 
Captain, “but only for a moment.” “I wonder how 
he dare do it,” he thought. 

‘ ‘ On Sunday evening ! ” exclaimed Mevrouw 
Romeyn, in a tone of displeasure. ‘ ‘ I should think 
he might at least stop away from the place on Sun- 
days. And for nothing else, too, than a bit of copy 
that any clerk might have made. He is always talk- 
ing of his ‘copy.’ 1 cannot understand, as I have re- 
peatedly told him, that he is not too proud, if he must 
go in for writing, to send in other than original 
work. ” 

“Oh, I suppose all those papers crib from one an- 
other,” said the Captain, good-humouredly. 

It is characteristic of the relations between mother 
and son that Alfred had never deemed it worth his 
while to correct the Major’s error. 

“ I consider it a mistake,” said the Major, sharply. 
When she said that, nobody ever ventured on any fur- 
ther suggestion. Her defunct lord used to creep away 
out of the room and undo what he had done. Alfred 
would whistle, and put his hands in his pockets, and 
retain his opinion. 

It is probable that the dictum on this occasion did 
not refer so much to the institution of the editorial scis- 
sors as to the waste of Alfred’s talents. For she be- 
lieved in Alfred’s talents almost as much as in their 
waste. She spread herself out across the sofa with a 
snort and a sweep, and then she remarked spitefully : 

“It is time we were having tea. If you have quite 
done, Ada, with your remarkable performance at the 
piano, I think we had better have tea. ” 

The words were amiable, but the voice was omi- 
nous. An unpleasant accent lingered over ‘ ‘ the re- 
markable performance at the piano.” But Ada was 
as accustomed to hot water as the traditional shrimp. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


51 


She went over to the tea-table and busied herself 
with the tiny cups and the bright copper kettle. The 
Major and her brother sat down to their game of 
piquet. This Sunday dinner was a weekly institution. 
It had taken place for years, ever since the time when 
the children still played at lotto together. 

Anton helped Ada at the tea-table, under his aunt's 
attentive eye. He could not even explain to her the 
difference between sport and earnest. And very likely 
she would not have understood the explanation as 
coming from him. For there are two kinds of banter 
between “ he ” and “she.” The one hides a too deep 
understanding. It is fateful. The other hides a lack 
of understanding. It is harmless. And Ada’s was 
the latter form. 

“The weather is disagreeable,” said Anton. 

“Very,” replied Ada. 

“ I wish it would leave off raining,” said Anton. 

“ I wish it would go on,” replied Ada. 

“Go on, Ada.? What for.?” said Anton. 

“Because there is nothing I dislike so much as dry- 
ness,” replied Ada. “I dislike all things, Anton, that 
are dry.” 

‘ ‘ Not dry humour .? ” said Anton. 

“No, not dry humour, I suppose,” replied Ada, 
demurely. “What is dry humour, Anton? I'm not 
sure I know. Could you give me a specimen .? ” 

Next morning, while shaving, Anton thought out 
that he should have answered : the play of a cat with 
a mouse she is going to devour. He cut himself with 
vexation, as he realized both the tardiness and aptness 
of the illustration. He was only comforted by the 
afterthought that it couldn’t have been such a very 
good one, because he had discovered it, and he was 
a duffer — at least in the gymnastics of the brain. He 
looked down at his brawny young arm. “I could 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


52 

kill anyone for her, ” he thought. But that was no use. 
Nobody wanted killing. 

Before he had answered the question, Alfred came : 
back. 

“ I wish you would not run out on Sundays,^' said \ 
his mother. She always did as much of her scolding ;1 
as she could in public. Besides, the Captain was i 
winning. He was very frightened. He almost pre- j 
ferred losing, only losing is so disagreeable, too. This 1 
weekly game of cards was in many ways a torment 
to the old gentleman, but he returned to it with almost ' 
as much pleasure as pain. 

“As well on Sundays as on other days,"’ said the ‘ 
son. “As far as lam concerned, I should be well j 
content never to run over to the shop at all. ” \ 

“Stop at home, lie-a-bed all day,” retorted the \ 
widow. “ I cannot understand why I have such \ 
indolent children. We have worked hard enough in | 
our day — have we not, Napoleon ? — and the children’s \ 
father always did his duty like a man. ” ^ 

“That he did, Major,” replied Trommels, shuffling i 
the cards. His name was indeed Napoleon. He bore \ 
it with ease. 

“Oh, as for that, ” said Alfred, lounging up to the 
tea-table and taking the first cup Ada had poured out. 

“ I have long given up attempting to solve the con- 
undrum how the child of such estimable parents could ; 
be such a degenerate soul as myself. ” j 

‘ ‘ Don’t be impertinent, Alfred. If you meant it, ; 
which you don’t, I could only say, how remarkably \ 
true ! ” || 

‘ ‘ Mevrouw, ” said Alfred, “ if it isn’t true, as I under- j 
stand you to say, it ought to be. There can be no i 
doubt of the degeneration. Surely there can be none | 
of the original perfection. £^rg-o. Quod erat demon- | 
strandum. By the bye, I met Toris Middelstum to- 1 
night.” I 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


S3 


“And what of him?” asked Mevrouw, sharply. 

“ Oh nothing. That is to say, not much that would 
interest you. He isn’t engaged.” 

“As if I cared,” interposed Mevrouw. 

“Well, at any rate, I can’t think of anything 
else that would interest you in connection with the 
man. I was glad to come across him. I haven’t 
seen him so radiant for months, not since his mother 
died.” 

“Ah, live and forget ! ” said Mevrouw. “We must 
make up our minds to be forgotten, Napoleon. ” 

There was no howl of protest, such as would have 
met this lugubrious prophecy in many a loving house- 
hold all over the world. The young ones had heard 
it before. They deemed it extremely improbable that 
they would ever forget the Major. 

“It wasn’t that, ma’am. It was his dinner had 
done it. He stopped me in the street before I had 
noticed him, and he told me he had just had the most 
splendid repast for next to nothing at the ‘Mille 
Colonnes.’ ‘I can’t understand,’ he said, ‘that 
people, unmarried people especially, but married 
people also, don’t sometimes go dining out at a good 
restaurant so as to recuperate. I assure you, I feel 
ten years younger,’ he said, ‘ I never had so good a 
dinner in my life ! ' ” 

“ Don’t repeat nonsense, Alfred,” his mother burst 
in angrily. ‘ ‘ As for married people dining at restau- 
rants, I should like to see the Dutch housewife would 
permit it, and, as for unmarried people, there ought 
to be none. — Of course I mean unmarried people 
outside their parents’ homes,” she went on, after a 
moment. “ Ridiculous talk about gorging and guz- 
zling. He is very ungrateful ; and his mother slaved 
for him all her life. She was a foolish, weak 
woman, I know, and I don’t want to hear anything 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


54 

about her. But now, when she is hardly cold in her 
grave, the son must complain of the food she gave 
him.” 

“ He did nothing of the kind,” began Alfred. 

“ Silence ! How dare you interrupt me .? You know 
that I will not be interrupted. I understand his allu- 
sions. The moment has come for him to waste his 
substance in taverns. Never had so good a dish in 
his life, forsooth ! No one ever got a decent dinner 
in a restaurant yet. ” 

“Quite true,” assented the Captain, shaking his 
moustachioed face over the cards. “ It looks nice, 
but it isn’t. Not clean, you know, Fred.” 

“ No, indeed,” cried the widow. “ I haven’t tasted 
a morsel in a public eating-house for the last twenty 
years, and I wouldn’t do it — no, not if I were dying 
of hunger. ” 

“Not even if you got an invitation.?” queried her 
son. 

“ Not for all the invitations in the world. Not to 
obtain what I should like best on earth. Faugh, the 
nasty messes ! Not even, for instance, to celebrate 
Ada’s betrothal, and yet, what a weight off my mind 
that would be ! ” 

Anton scowled at her. Ada, busy among her tea- 
cups, pretended not to hear. 

“ I should like to see Joris Middelstum again, Fred,” 
she said, quietly. “It is years ago since he was here 
last. In fact, I was quite a child, when he used to 
visit us. I wonder what made him leave off ? ” 

Did she know or did she not .? Personally she did 
not. Yet there was a fond de diablerie in Ada’s 
nature, which always rendered an outbreak of resist- 
ance possible as she grew older, although such events 
were of the very rarest occurrence. Her mother had 
not succeeded in squashing her altogether. She had 


A QUESTION- OF TASTE. 


55 

obtained from her almost more indifference than sub- 
mission. 

Joris Middelstum had left off visiting the Romeyns 
nearly ten years ago. The rupture had taken place, 
as such ruptures will, through the intervention of the 
ladies of the two families. For Mevrouw Romeyn 
having thought fit to point out to Mevrouw IMiddel- 
stum, in the course of a visit at that lady’s house, that 
her foolish indifference was ruining Joris’s character, 
and, still more, his prospects of marriage, the fond 
mother had requested her visitor to mind her own 
business. The matter might have rested there, had 
Mevrouw Romeyn not taken occasion to tack on to 
this scrap of feline amenity the utterly superfluous 
information that a Major’s wife was of more conse- 
quence than a Baron’s granddaughter in the female line, 
upon which Mevrouw Middelstum rang the bell and 
requested her little handmaid, with great stateliness, 
to guide Mrs. Major Romeyn to the door. All inter- 
course between the two families had accordingly 
ceased, but Joris, who detested vulgar rows, had con- 
tinued to be polite to the Major, and friendly, after 
the good man’s death, to his still youthful son. And 
Alfred, in his own queer way, liked IVIynheer Middel- 
stum and was sorry for his loneliness, now that he 
was alone. He had laughed formerly at the ‘ ‘ married 
life of the Middelstums ” as he called it Who knows 
what a flood of bitter disappointment the young poet 
hid under that laugh. 

“ I won’t hear Joris Middelstum’s name mentioned,” 
cried the widow, “ I won’t hear anything more about 
the unfortunate man. His mother has ruined him, I 
tell you, Napoleon. His blood be on her head ; it’s 
no business of mine. Had she listened to me, instead 
of insulting me, it would have been better for them 


A QUESTION’ OF TASTE. 


56 

woe be to the woman who should fall into that trap 1 
But no woman will. And now, deprived of the slave 
who ministered to every caprice, he runs out into the 
streets, and sinks into every depth of drunken and 
dissolute dissi ” 

^‘Aunt!” cried Anton, in a voice like a pistol 
shot. 

Everybody looked at him. He grew purple. 

Bravo, Anton, you’ll be a man yet,” murmured 
Alfred, walking towards him. 

“ Brother,” said the Major, “if you bring up your 
children to insult me, I have nothing more to say. 
We cannot play in this clatter. Give me the cards 
for one more game.” 

“No, no. Major,” said the captain, “Anton means 
well. What do you mean, you young dog, by mean- 
ing anything else ? As for ruin, sister, the old lady 
hasn’t brought it about from a financial point of view. 
I hear she kept all the money in her own hands, and 
she’s scraped and pinched a pretty penny together. 
They tell me he found it at her death, and it makes 
him very comfortably off, as times go, not to speak 
of his salary at the office. ” 

“ Humph ! ” grunted the old soldier, “ the more for 
him to squander on riotous living.” 

“Yes,” interposed Alfred as a parting thrust at his 
mother. “That explains his telling me that he would 
never dine outside a first-class restaurant again all the 
rest of his born days. Oh, jolly ! ” And he smacked 
his lips. 

“As you are a poet, Alfred,” remarked his mother, 
“ you might at least avoid being vulgar. Give us the 
advantage, if you please, of all your disadvantage.” 

And then she finished her last game in silence — • 
and lost it. 


A QUESTION- OF TASTE, 


57 


CHAPTER VII. 

SUPERFLUITY AND NAUGHTINESS. 

“Ada,” said Mevrouw Rome/n, following her daughter 
into the latter’s modest little sanctum, ‘ ‘ we must have 
a talk together. We haven’t had one for some time. 
I seek to avoid seeing your faults as long as I can 
decently do so, but I refuse to be blind to them, as 
some less conscientious mothers would be. I refuse 
to be blind to them, do you hear } ” 

“Yes, mamma, I hear,” said Ada. 

If Mevrouw Romeyn was entitled to the appellation 
of “ Soldier,” it was not on account of her talent for 
tactics, for she had none. Hers were not the general’s 
soldierly qualities, but the corporal’s. And she made 
the mistake of thinking that a raw recruit never 
ripens. 

“ But it is not enough for you to hear,” continued 
Mevrouw. “ You must see ; you must see for your- 
self the impropriety of your behaviour. You cannot 
always wait till I tell you. And I have something 
better to do than to spend my life running after a 
great grown-up daughter, to see whether she behaves 
herself.” 

“ Mamma ! ” 

“Ay, mamma! Or don’t you call it misbehaving 
yourself to flirt with your cousin in a manner the 
most unmaidenly, immodest, un — un ” 

“Unbecoming,” suggested Ada, with something of 
her brother’s tone. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


58 


“ Leave the room ! ” declaimed the Major majesti- 
cally. And then she suddenly remembered that this 
was impracticable. “ No,” she added. “ Stay where 
you are, and listen to me. As you do not choose to 
remember what is maidenly and decent — it is not for 
want of having been properly told — I must arrange 
these matters for you, at least as long as you remain 
under my roof. If you continue the tone with your 
cousin Anton which you have both recently adopted, 
I shall speak to uncle Trommels, and forbid the boy 
the house.” 

It is strange how much well-schooled daughters 
will bear from their mammas. But there is one thing 
they will not bear, and that is the charge of un- 
maidenliness. 

“You are mistaken,” said Ada, looking straight at 
her mother out of her clear blue eyes, “ in supposing 
that any — anything of the kind has passed between 
Anton and me. He has always played at flirting with 
me since we were babies. He plays at it still. But 
I tell him it is play. And he knows it. ” 

“So be it,” retorted the Major, with a grim recol- 
lection of her own evenings experiences, “but some 
people play and win ; and other people play and 
lose. You must belong to the former class, my dear 
girl, remember that. ” 

“My dear girl,” was the Major’s substitute for 
“ you impudent creature. ” She had made the sub- 
stitution when Ada was confirmed. 

Ada got up and stood facing her mother. Till then 
she had been sitting listlessly on the side of the bed. 
The Major always stood, when scolding. It gave 
her a certain advantage, which one might have 
thought she did not require. 

“You want me to marry,” said Ada. “You tell 
me, and everybody else, so all day long. Only to- 


A QUESTION- OF TASTE. 


59 


night you said it was the thing you desired most 
earnestly on earth. Well, I am willing to obey you 
in this as in all things. I may as well marry Anton 
as anyone else.” 

“I will not be dictated to,” replied the Major. 
“You shall marry when I choose and whom I choose, 
Ada, as long as there's law in the Netherlands.” 

“ When you choose, mamma ? That is just what 
I was saying. You choose now. And I have not 
much objection. I may as well be out of the house 
as in it. And if Anton asks me to leave it ” 

“ You shall say no,” the Major fell in. “I couldn’t 
support you and your husband, if I would, and I 
wouldn't if I could. You shall marry a man with 
a competency, and not a penniless lieutenant like 
Anton. ” 

“ There’s his mother's brother in America ” 

began Ada. 

“ Yes, and the revenues of his castles in Spain,” 
cried the wrathful Major. “I know nothing of his 
mother’s brother in America, except that he writes 
home to say that he is doing magnificently. Who 
is to deny it ? And as for owning a hundred thou- 
sand head of cattle, you need only walk out into the 
fields to see that it’s absurd. ” 

“ I should almost begin to fancy, mamma, that 
you are not so anxious to get rid of me as you 
say. ” 

“ Indeed but I am, miss. Only, I won't have you 
thrown back on my hands with a couple of brats 
to boot. ” 

“ Let us pour out clear wine to each other (the ex- 
pression is a Dutch one). Why are you so anxious 
for me to go ? ” 

^ ‘ I shall answer no impertinent questions, Ada. ” 

“ I think I can guess,” said Ada, tranquilly. 


6o A QUESTION OF TASTE. 

That is to say, you believe I am jealous of your 
young good looks next to mine. Thank you, Ada. 
If I had wished to marry again, I could have done so, 
Mejuffrouw, and deserted my duty to my children, 
and lived in affluence, over and over again. I am re- 
warded by insolence and ingratitude for the devotion 
of a lifetime. ” 

“ I am sorry, mamma,” said Ada, with a slight 
flush on her face. ‘ ‘ It would be so much easier if we 
understood each other better. ” 

‘ ‘ If you find it impossible to understand why your 
being advantageously settled would conduce to the 
comfort of the whole family, it is not for me to ex- 
plain. I cannot teach my children affection for each 
other, when they have not even learned to show it to 
their mother. ” 

‘ ‘ Do you mean Alfred ? ” said Ada suddenly. 

‘ ‘ Don't ask me ! ” cried Mevrouw Romeyn. ‘ ‘ Go 
on eating and sleeping, singing and playing, and try- 
ing on your Sunday clothes. There's money enough 
for all of us and to spare. And it’s a good thing for a 
young man like Alfred to remain unmarried. But you 
don’t go off with a penniless pauper, mind that ! 
There's room enough in this house for you, I suppose, 
but there’s not room enough for your companion-beg- 
gar and your half-dozen beggar babies. ” And she 
flounced out of the room. She took a long time to 
cool down, seated on her own sofa, spluttering and 
fussing. She and Ada could not get on with each 
other. It was very unfortunate. And, looked at by 
her light and from her standpoint, there was nothing 
unreasonable in Mevrouw Romeyn's wish to dispose 
of her daughter. Their struggle — not for existence, 
but for respectability — it is a far harder one, though 
'we hear much less about it — their struggle for respec- 
tability had lasted long enough to wear out any heart 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


6r 


less stout than the Major’s. Ada had grown up into 
a good-looking girl. Now or never was the moment 
for her to contribute her share to the improvement of 
the family fortunes. Mevrouw Romeyn counted on 
the assistance of an influential son-in-law to bring 
Alfred to his senses. And even the little which Adas 
departure would save would make a great difference 
in the small budget of the household. Ada was selfish. 
Mevrouw Romeyn could not understand it. She 
domineered over all her surroundings. Everybody 
went out of her way. And yet she had no influence 
at all. 

Ada sat motionless some time after her mother had 
left her, thinking, with her face in her hands. It was 
true that she was not of much use in the house. Her 
mother had never allowed her to interfere with a 
number of matters which she — the Major — declared 
she could manage much better herself. Ada played 
the piano and sang. 'She made all her own dresses, 
and made them well, for this she had been taught to 
do. But she felt that, although the charge of useless- 
ness might be an unjust one, it was not altogether 
untrue. She hastily rearranged her dress, and stole 
down to her brother. Her heart beat as she passed 
the Majors door, and she held her breath for a 
moment to listen. Yes, they were frightened of her, 
even while they resisted her. 

Alfred was pacing up and down his room in the 
basement — his eye in a fine frenzy rolling — a paper 
and pencil under the full light of the lamp on his table. 

‘"Then spake the warrior, with uplifted crest,” he 
muttered. 

“Then spake the warrior, with uplifted' crest.” 
The door opened, and his sister came in. 

“ ‘ Deeds are by deeds, and not by words redressed,’ 
Don’t bother me just now, Ada. I’m busy.” 


62 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


All right,” said Ada. I’ll sit down and wait till 
you’ve finished.” 

“No, no, that would be maddening. Like dinner , 
at the station while the train is waiting. I couldn’t 
compose a line. Just wait till I’ve put down these.” ^ 
He scribbled a few hurried words on his sheet, ; 
and then turning towards his sister as a doctor might 
towards a patient, he said : “ What is it ? Why aren’t 
you gone to bed ? ” 

“Alfred,” said Ada, gravely. “I want to get , 
married. ” j 

But Alfred was not impressed by her manner. “A j 
fine!” he cried, “A fine!” For they were all so \ 
sick of the Major’s match-making talk — it had only 
been talk hitherto — that the three youngsters had ■ 
bound themselves down to avoid the subject, and 
had tried to exact a like promise from their uncle. j 
It was too bad of Ada to come talking nonsense at | 
half-past eleven. Her brother’s thoughts wandered j 

back to his poem. j 

“ Please be serious,” the young lady went on, “I j 
mean it in all earnest. And you must help me. For | 
how am I to get married unless you introduce me to ] 
some men ? We live far too quietly here, and we see j 
nobody. Don’t you understand } ” i 

“ Hardly,” said Alfred. His voice was sufficiently 
serious to satisfy her. 

“It is evident enough, I should think. You must | 
bring some of your friends from the club, though I 
don’t think I shall like them particularly. Their hair j 
is too long. And you may bring Mynheer Middel- j 
stum of whom we were speaking this evening. I | 
meet him in the streets sometimes, and I think he 
looks very pleasant.” 

“And what will mother say to such visits ? ” asked 
Alfred, They mean cakes and bottles of wine,” 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. ' 63 

'*They mean more than that,*' said Ada. “ They 
mean dinner parties and supper parties. Never mind. 
Leave me to manage with mother as best I can. She 
must be willing to incur some final expenses. Re- 
member, if the thing succeeds, they will be final for 
you both.” 

There was a moment’s silence. 

“ Little sister, little sister,” said the poet presently, 

I don't think all this is very nice.” 

He came forward to her, and would have drawn 
her face towards him. But she pushed his hand 
away. 

“ Don’t you ? ” she said, in a shrill voice. “ Don’t 
you really ? But surely you can understand that I 
want to get out of this house ; can you not Or are 
you so happy in it } Then so much the better. You 
will be all the happier when I am gone.” 

I ! ” he cried out indignantly. “ I ! — Ada ! ” 

But she had left the room. She had to get back to 
her own in time and throw herself on the bed, before 
she burst into tears. 


64 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


CHAPTER VIII. 

A COUPLE OF EXHIBITIONS. 

The year of Joris Middelstum’s misfortunes was also 
the year of the Great Provincial Exhibition at Dom- 
melen. 

All exhibitions are “great,” even the smallest. 
But the exhibition a man makes of himself when he 
goes to spend a happy day in one with his wife and 
family is the greatest exhibition of all. 

Joris Middelstum had no wife and family to take. 
So he had less excuse for going than most people had. 
But the town of Dommelen is only twenty miles from 
the Hague. And Joris went because everybody 
seemed to be going, and because he had heard there 
was a good collection of the insects to be found in 
the province. 

He mused over himself and his doings in the train, 
as people usually do after they have finished their 
newspaper. The loss of his immaculate mother lay 
as a dark stain still over all his thoughts, but, none 
the less, he could not help admitting to himself that 
he felt more comfortable than a fortnight ago. He 
had arranged his life on a new plan which made him 
almost independent of Dientje by raising her at one 
sweep from the position of maid to that of mistress. 
That is to say, he had given her a drudge to bully, 
instead of letting her remain a drudge. And he had 
handed her exact written instructions as to the drudge’s 
duties. He had bought her a new thermometer and 


A QUESTION- OF TASTE, 


65 

carefully explained its use (explanation three times 
repeated). Moreover, he had begged her to take the 
drudge’s welfare to heart and to train her into an 
experienced and intelligent domestic servant. He felt 
some stings of conscience, undoubtedly, when he saw 
the small maiden’s red eyes, but he only rarely saw 
them, and desperation makes even the best of us hard- 
hearted. 

Was this the Joris of yesterday, who could not bear 
to give pain ? Well, there were no more buttons off 
his shirts, and his cups and saucers were clean, and 
his room was comfortably warmed. “Set a thief to 
catch a thief,” he said to himself. But he misapplied 
the quotation sadly. For he had started with his 
criminal, and had created a second, so as to give the 
first employ. 

And he had simplified matters still more thoroughly 
by dining out of doors. Since the unhappy Sunday 
which had ended so comfortably, he had not partaken 
of any other meal than breakfast in his own house. 
His housekeeper might feel aggrieved — still more did 
she look aggrieved. — he was adamant. I mean he 
pretended to be adamant. He had never belonged 
to a dining club during his mother’s life, only a reading- 
room. He now returned nightly to the “ Mille Co- 
lonnes,” and his soul was content. 

It was about eleven o’clock on a bright, cold spring 
morning that Joris walked through the gaily decorated 
entrance of the little exhibition — the great exhibition, 

I beg its pardon. There were a lot of flags about, 
flapping briskly in the breeze, as the white clouds hur- 
ried along a lofty blue sky. The exhibition-buildings 
looked bright in their medley of coloured stripes, and 
it would all have been very cheerful and pleasant, had 
the weather not been so raw and had Joris not been 
alone. He hated being alone. That was the worst 
5 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


66 

of this bachelor. His mother had always accompanied 
him everywhere, except to the theatre. For such had 
been the agreement between them. He was not to 
ask her to go to the theatre, and she was not to ask 
him to go to church. 

He shivered in his winter coat, as he stood paying 
his money at the turnstile. “Cold weather, sir," said 
the gate-keeper, touching his cap. “Yes," replied 
Joris. “Many people here.?" “Any number, sir," 
said the gate-keeper, with another smile, and he 
touched his cap again. 

Joris shivered afresh, as he peeped through a rent 
in the awning which flapped to and fro like the sails 
of a ship. 'The exhibition gardens lay desolate in the 
fresh morning air, agricultural utensils and hideous 
naked nymphs scattered helplessly across them. 
There seemed to be no earthly reason why anything 
should stand where it did. The gardening imple- 
ments, especially, and the upstart machines for doing 
nobody knows what, looked altogether isolated and 
out of place. 

“ Band plays from two to four," volunteered the 
gate-keeper who had followed him a few steps. 

“ Poor band ! " said Joris, as he turned resolutely 
into Gallery No. III. Gallery No. I was nowhere 
near the entrance. How should it be .? 

Gallery No. III. Flax and Hemp Industries. Joris 
stood hesitating at his end of the long striped marquee. 
Then he turned mechanically towards the first of a 
line of glass cases, which went right down the middle 
of the gallery. 

“Case containing thirty-seven various forms of 
towels for kitchen, pantry, and parlour, all made in 
the mills of Messrs. Abel Pons en Zonen et Olster, 
near Dommelen." Silver medal. 

Still mechanically he turned towards the other side ; 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


67 

“Case containing forty-three kinds of cloths required 
for a grand spring-cleaning, made in the mills of 
Messrs. Wit en Wonders at Peerling, near Olsten" 
Bronze medal. 

He looked down the line. How cold and dead and 
tiresome all that flax and hemp looked. Why had he 
come ! 

“ Buy a catalogue, Mynheer," said a dismal man 
in a cocked hat. 

“No," said Joris, peevishly. “ Where are the 
insects ? " 

“The what? " 

“ The insects," reiterated Joris, blushing and feeling 
as if he had asked something improper. 

“Insects? There are no insects here," said the 
official indignantly. He thought that Joris was poking 
fun at him. ‘ ‘ There’s disinfectants used in all the 
rooms," he added, as he walked away. 

Joris did not hear the last remark, but the whole 
incident much disconcerted him. There was only 
one person at the other end of the gallery, and he was 
intently studying all the cases by the aid of a thick 
book, evidently the catalogue. He was a very mild- 
looking old gentleman, far more like a country clergy- 
man than anyone connected with trade. Joris sidled 
away in his direction. He saw him gazing with much 
apparent interest into Case No. 1 7, Messrs. Pop and 
Pieterse : Forty-nine articles as required by every 
housemaid, etc., etc. He wondered whether he had 
been there all yesterday, and whether they had over- 
looked him when the doors were closed at night. 
Joris broke into a brisk run. He knew there was no 
pace at an exhibition between a dawdle and a rush. 
So he walked as fast as he could through Gallery XXIII, 
which opened out of Gallery III, and was full of 
preserved eatables in tins. Nobody could get at the 


68 A QUESTION OF TASTE. 

eatables, and presumably the tins were empty. Two 
or three ladies were gazing at them with solemn ad- 
miration, their imaginations bursting, no doubt, with 
dreams of a paradise of store-cupboards. Joris’s foot 
slipped out as he walked. Why did they wet the 
floors of these places .? It was quite rheumatic enough 
already. And there were abominable draughts. 

‘'Buy a catalogue,” said a melancholy creature at 
his elbow. 

“No,” burst out Joris. “Where is the entomo- 
logical collection ? ” 

‘ ‘ The wha/, Mynheer ? ” 

‘ ‘ The, the — insects ? ” 

“Gallery No. XIX.” 

“ And where is Gallery No. XIX ? ” 

“ At the farther end, on the other side of the great 
court, turn to the left, then round by the tombola and 
the merry-go-rounds, third room to the right.” 

“ I can’t remember that,” said Joris, more crossly 
than ever.” 

‘ ‘ It’s on the map, Mynheer, all on the map. Buy 
a catalogue ? ” 

Joris blushed to the roots of his hair as he made the 
purchase. 

He was in a disgraceful temper by the time he 
came across the Romeyns. He was looking at 
nothing, which is the best thing to do, after all, if 
you must go to exhibitions. And Alfred and his sister 
saw him, before he noticed them. 

They had come over to Dommelen, the three of 
them, Alfred, Ada, and Anton. Not that money- 
wasting excursions were frequent in the family, but 
this one was in fulfilment of a rash promise made by 
Uncle Trommels after dinner a few days ago. He 
had hoped to be of the party till he realised that his 
presence would also mean the Major’s. The Major, 


A (QUESTION- OF TASTE, 69 

estimable as she was, could not be considered an 
acquisition as concerning pleasure-parties. Even her 
admiring-brother admitted that fact to his son. So 
‘ ‘ let the young people go by themselves, and the old 
people stay at home,” said the Captain. The Major 
grumbled. But the Captain paid. 

“Alfred,” cried Ada, in sudden alarm. “Don’t 
look that way. There’s that odious acquaintance of 
yours, Mynheer Middelstum.” 

The name had never been mentioned between them 
since that Sunday evening when Ada had so ungra- 
ciously interrupted her brother’s poetic flight. 

“Why not?” demanded Alfred, teasingly. “I’ll 
introduce him to you, Ada. Ask him whether he 
remembers you. Here, wait while I go and speak to 
him.” 

“No, indeed,” cried Ada, excitedly. “No, — 
Alfred— don’t.” 

But Alfred, who had also found the exhibition more 
depressing than he had bargained for, walked across 
the room and lifted his hat. 

When he looked round again, Ada was gone. She 
had whisked round a corner into Gallery No. XII, 
accompanied by her faithful lieutenant. 

After the wild outburst to her brother, she could not 
bear the idea of meeting Joris Middelstum in his pres- 
ence. She had made a fool of herself. And worse 
than that. Her eyes smarted at the thought. It 
would have been better, had she mentioned one or 
two other names at the same time. But she had 
thrown down this one only, as it rose uppermost, by 
chance, in her mind, and there it now lay for ever,^ in 
Alfred’s memory, in her shame and in his mocking 
eyes. She felt that she hated poor innocent Joris 
Middelstum, who always took off his hat so politely, 
when they met in the streets, to the woman he had 


70 A QUESTION OF TASTE. 

not spoken with since she was a child still under her 
teens. 

“How appetising those pippins look/' she said 
eagerly, drawing her attendant swain towards fresh 
regiments of cases. ‘ ‘ Dear me, what a quantity of 
dried apples ! I had no idea there were so many in 
the world. And all these, only out of this single pro- 
vince. Now, isn't that wonderful ? " 

“There are a great many apples in the world,” 
replied Anton, who took everything “ ati pied de la 
lettre . ” “I think we might go and look at something 
else now if you don't object.” 

“I hope I am mistaken in imagining that I have 
separated you from your party,” Joris was saying 
nervously. ‘ ‘ I am very sorry, but you must not 
allow me to do so. This place is a labyrinth. Pray 
return to them before they go astray. ” 

“ Are you alone, Mynheer ? ” asked Alfred. 

“Yes, I am,” replied Joris, with a melancholy 
grin. 

Young Romeyn was a full-blown republican and 
equality-man. At least, so he used to tell you, in a 
manner which made you think him not a full-blown 
anything, but a gosling just beginning to strut. He 
rather liked the idea of walking about in the vast lone- 
liness with a man like Joris Middelstum. For Joris 
was a dozen years his senior, and ‘ ‘ somebody ” at 
the Treasury. And he enjoyed the prospect of his 
sister's discomfiture. She wanted a little teasing on 
this subject, to bring her to her senses. 

“ If you would allow me,” he suggested, a little 
timidly, “ we would walk down together till we come 
across them again. We can hardly miss them in the 
crowd.” 

“ Gladly,” acquiesced Joris. But he was frightened, 
none the less, at the idea of coming into contact with 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


71 

a young lady — a bright, dashing-looking young lady 
— whom he did not know. 

So they walked on together, their footsteps ringing 
in the stillness. Alfred was content. But in the 
deepest depth of his conviction, he considered himself 
immensely superior to a poor middle-aged creature 
like Joris Middelstum. 

“I am going to have a look at the insects,” said 
Joris. “I take rather an interest in various kinds of 
insects, you know,” he added, modestly. 

“Oh, yes,” replied Romeyn. He thought to 
himself with contempt what a fool a man must be to 
waste his time in sorting beetles. But it was un- 
grateful of him to judge disrespectfully of insects in 
general, for he should have remembered what good 
work they do for him and his brother poets as aids to 
simile and metaphor. The butterfly alone has seen 
several thousand years of faithful service as an em- 
blem of inconstancy and transitoriness. The poets 
tell us the world is ungrateful, but no one is more un- 
grateful than the poets. Only last week Alfred had 
written an ode “Upon a Beetle's broken Wing.” The 
beetle was a dragon-fly. 

They came upon the two cousins, as they slipped 
through a curtained entrance into Gallery No. XIII, 
Porcelain and Glass. Ada — her heart in a foolish pit- 
a-pat of nervous expectation — saw them coming, and 
turned rapidly away so as to be altogether engrossed 
in the study of a grand dinner-service of native pro- 
duction. Her foot slipped, even as Joris’s had done 
before, on the shining floor: she clutched at some- 
thing in her fright — a loose rope which hung from 
post to post partitioning off the cases — it swung away 
under her grasp and the young lady fell forward with 
her arm into the plate glass cupboard-front. Crash ! 
A pile of plates went sliding rapidly to the ground, 


72 A QUESTION OF TASTE. 

and, as the whole stand rocked back under the shock, 
other slippery articles toppled lightly from their places, 
and in a general commotion and running to and fro 
of things breakable, a shower of dishes, soup tureens 
and sauce-boats descended upon Ada Romeyn. 

No, she wasn’t killed, though I verily believe that 
in that first moment of disgustful horror Alfred would 
almost have liked her to have been. It would have 
given the catastrophe a better appearance by imposing 
the tragic element on every one at once. As it was, 
she did not even feel very much injured, beyond a 
few bruises and the irreparable damage to her thick 
winter hat. Most of the things had not broken on 
her, but had bounded with a thump off her shoulders 
to break quietly on the floor. They were all broken ; 
of that there could be no shadow of a doubt. Alfred 
despised himself (momentarily) for feeling that it was 
indecent on her part to be the only object that had 
reached the ground unhurt. 

But for the moment the tragic thought was upper- 
most in everybody’s thoughts. Joris and Anton had 
rushed forward with spontaneous alacrity and were 
helping the young lady up from among the fragments 
of crockery to the immense amusement of a large 
half-circle of spectators. It was amazing how many 
curious pairs of eyes those empty exhibition-rooms 
had vomited forth in one moment towards the scene 
of the smash. 

They got her on to a divan in the corner of the 
room, and there she lay back and laughed. The 
larger part of the crowd, which had moved round with 
the “body,” in fervid expectation of a feast of broken 
bones, dwindled away at this disappointing symptom, 
all but some of the more knowing ones, who under- 
stood that it was hysterical, and waited to see the 
anti-climax come on. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


73 

The three gentleman stood in front of her, Anton in 
transports of delight at her “ deliverance,” Joris filled 
with good-humoured contempt of Woman in general 
(with a capital w), Alfred repeating to himself with 
hard-set teeth, that he would slap her next moment, 
if she did not stop. Fortunately for them both, per- 
haps, — for Anton wore his sword — she began to cry 
before the slapping came on. 

No rain-storm sweeps such a change over a land- 
scape as a woman’s tears over the faces of her male 
companions. In one moment, the whole manner, 
both of Joris and Anton, betokened the deepest con- 
cern, and even Alfred, though more reserved in his 
sympathy, could not deny that he felt sorry for his 
sister s distress. They had to comfort her ; and Joris, 
in his desperate efforts to do so, quite forgot that he 
was frightened of ladies. And yet they might perhaps 
have experienced some difficulty, had not a fourth 
person come effectually to their aid. 

Who’s to pay for this here lark, gentlemen ?” said 
a rough voice close behind them. It said the words 
in equivalent Dutch, in which they sounded even yet 
more unfeeling. 

All three turned round quickly. Ada felt that the 
time had come to leave off luxuriating in one’s feel- 
ings and to rise to the requirements of the situation. 

‘ ‘ At how much do you estimate it .? ” asked Alfred, 
faintly, trying in vain to look ready for anything. 

The individual — he was an official of some kind, 
with the inevitable band round his cap — smiled dubi- 
ously. “I don’t rightly know,” he replied. “ How 
should I ? We shall have to sort what’s broken and 
then find out what it’s valued at in the committee’s 
books. All the prices are down at the office, you un- 
derstand. And, then, there’s a matter of thirty florins 
or so for the broken pane. A payment of a hundred 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


74 

and fifty florins would make all square, I dare say. " 

The little party followed this personage, as directed. 
For the first moment or two they were struck dumb. 
One hundred and fifty florins ! What would the 
Major say ? Even Joris felt instinctively. What 
would the Major say .? 

But he soon realized that it was his duty to bring 
consolation to the sorrowing damsel, so he drew her 
away from the loquacious official who was expatiating 
to Alfred and Anton, fascinated against their will, on 
the beauty of the damaged china. He said hurriedly 
that he felt sure the man was exaggerating, and that 
the final amount to be paid would be proved much 
smaller than they feared. And then he pointed to 
some objects on their way which he suddenly found 
out to be deeply interesting, and she stopped to look 
at them with what attention she could command. 

And presently he rallied her on this strange renewal 
of an old acquaintance. “I, at least, am fortunate, 
through your misfortune,"' he said. He was delighted 
with the sprightliness of his manner. He felt quite 
at his ease. For her utter prostration gave him an 
immense advantage, such as is not to be enjoyed 
every day. 

And then he talked of other things ; of her youth, 
of her father, whom he praised, and of her brother 
Alfred. They were strolling down the long passages 
towards the entrance, the two lads a little way on in 
front with their guide. 

“ He will make his way," said Joris. “You may 
be sure of that. I feel convinced he is clever. But 
he has chosen a laborious, a most ungrateful career. 
No one must serve the Muses for anything beyond 
the pleasure of serving. Yet be sure that, neverthe- 
less, they know how to reward. He will make a 
name among the immortals ; do not doubt of it.” 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


75 

He would have crowned Alfred successor to Apollo 
(who, alas, is dead. He died about fifty years ago), 
if by so doing he could have contributed in any way 
to Ada’s peace of mind at that moment. 

“ Mynheer Middelstum,” she said suddenly, in a 
tone of desperation. “ It is terrible. He said a hun- 
dred and fifty florins. I am wondering whatever we 
shall do.” 

‘ ‘ Why can’t you think of something else, you tire- 
some creature.?” thought Joris, in much distress of 
mind. He only said eagerly: “But I once more 
assure you he is probably vastly exaggerating. We 
shall know he is in a few moments. The porcelain 
was of a very common kind, very hard and coarse, I 
should say. ” 

“Yes, it certainly was. That is true,” acquiesced 
Ada, ruefully, remembering the heavy bumps she had 
received. 

Joris hastened to follow up his advantage. “It 
was abominable stuff,” he went on, “of the very 
worst and cheapest manufacture. Why, those articles 
cost next to nothing nowadays. You can get a whole 
dinner-service for twelve persons at twenty or thirty 
florins. You will find this kind of thing costs even 
less.” 

“God grant it,” said Ada, earnestly. “You must 
not think me fussy. Mynheer. We are anything but 
rich, and it would mean a very real trouble to us all 
if my mother had to pay so large a sum for my care- 
lessness. ” 

Before Joris could answer, they stopped at the 
office. But he looked in her face, and saw that she 
was once more struggling to force back the tears. 
He turned away quickly toward the other gentlemen, 
who were waiting for further information from the 
constituted authorities. 


>j(y A QUESTION OE TASTE. 

“You will scarcely have the requisite sum with 
you, Romeyn,” he said. “Perhaps it would be best 
for me to serve as an additional reference. I have 
cards here, fortunately, with my ‘ style and title ’ on 
them. My shop cards, as I have heard them called. 
Let me go in and give one of them to the man:” 

He passed into the inner room, as he spoke, swing- 
ing the door to behind him. But a chink remained 
open, through which Anton could get a partial glimpse 
of the other side. Alfred could see nothing. He 
looked round at his sister : “A pretty mess ! ” he 
said. 

‘ ‘ Mynheer Middelstum thinks the damage will be 
less,” she ventured to suggest. 

‘ ‘ Mynheer Middelstum can take it easily. Let him 
pay it himself.” 

“ Oh, Alfred ! ” 

In a moment Joris Middelstum came back with a 
radiant smile. His face clouded over for a moment, 
as his eyes met Anton’s, but he nodded reassuringly 
to him as well as to the others. 

“It’s all right,” he cried. “Didn’t I tell you so, 
Juffrouw Romeyn ? The cost of the crockery is ex- 
tremely small, and you can break any amount of it 
for twenty florins. There’s twenty-seven to pay for 
what you have broken, and ten florins for the pane of 
glass. That’s all, and it’s quite enough money to lose 
in so tiresome a manner.” 

“Thirty-seven florins!” cried Alfred, almost as 
much disturbed by this comparatively trifling reality 
as by the vast probability of two minutes ago. He 
did not appear to feel a bit relieved. “ Thirty-seven 
florins!” he said, desperately. “It’s no use. I 
haven’t got them with me. How much have you got, 
Anton ? I have ten.” 

“ How stupid of me ! ” cried Joris, in fresh distress. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


77 


I might have guessed that young people don't fill 
their pockets with money, unless they think they’ll 
have need of it. Few men have my bad habit of 
carrying all their property about with them. You 
must allow me — you really must allow me, Romeyn 
— to lend you the sum. You can repay me as soon 
as we get back.” 

He disappeared into the private room again and 
remained there — as it seemed to impatient Alfred — 
longer than was necessary. At last he returned, with 
a slip of paper. “ Here is the receipt,” he said. 
“ Will you take it.? And you owe me thirty-seven 
florins. ” 

“Thank you. Thank you, I know,” said Alfred, 
quickly. Then he looked at his watch. An exclama- 
tion of annoyance burst from his lips. “We have 
missed the train through this wretched business ! ” he 
cried. “ Misfortunes truly never come singly. And 
now, Anton, whatever are we to do .? ” 

“ Take the next,” replied Anton, but not very cheei^- 
fully. For he knew the peculiarities of Dutch time 
tables, which are puzzles of wilful and unwilling vexa- 
tion, put together with an ingenuity worthy of a better 
object. This one seems to be that no company’s trains 
should fit on to those of any other company — not even 
when competition is out of the question, and that 
every company’s trains should, as far as possible, go 
at hours which are inconvenient to the people obliged 
to travel by rail. By putting passengers down for an 
hour or two at intervening stations, an impression is 
created that the country is much larger than it really 
is, and that seems very pleasing to one’s national 
pride. The same system is followed ki another small 
country, — Switzerland. 

“We can’t get back till dinner-time,” said Alfred. 
“There isn’t another train between this and half-past 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


78' 

four. We must telegraph to mother. And what shall 
we do till then ? ” 

“ Have lunch,” suggested Joris, who was remark- 
ably ‘ ‘ en train. ” 

The trio looked at each other. Lunch — at least 
in Joris Middelstum’s company — meant fresh expense 
— the last thing they wished to go in for, after the 
morning’s disaster. Joris pretended to notice nothing. 

“ Lunch,” he repeated, “undoubtedly. After her 
fright Miss Romeyn stands in the greatest need of 
a rest and a glass of wine. You must let me cater 
for her. Come, you young people ” — he felt quite 
grey-headed — “you must permit me to invite you 
all three to lunch. I know of a place here where 
you can get one dish, at least, in perfection. We 
will have it. Miss Romeyn, will you excuse my 
taking the liberty, and allow me to lead the way out 
of this fateful — and disagreeable — place ? We must 
go elsewhere. Everything here would taste of broken 
glass. ” 

Ada still hesitated, and looked at Alfred, and Alfred 
looked away. But suddenly Anton broke in vehe- 
mently : 

“No, Mynheer, you must not add one more to 
your other kindnesses. I cannot allow it. Show us 
this place if you please, and allow me to play host.” 

Alfred and Ada stared at him in wonderment. Had 
misfortune deprived him of his senses ? Simultane- 
ously they felt a longing to take him between them, 
and fly. 

“ But I cannot ,” began Joris. 

“Yes, you can. One good turn deserves another. 
You understand me. Mynheer ? Shall we lead the 
way .? ” 

“As you please,” said Middelstum, stiffly. And 
they passed out of the Exhibition buildings. The 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 79 

brother and sister followed them in a maze of disap- 
pointment and amusement and disgust. 

“ It’s all very well for Middelstum to have man- 
aged it,” said Alfred, as they marched along. “But 
I daresay that we shall have to pay for his fine-gentle- 
man airs. I wish he had left it to me ; I should pro- 
bably have got it done cheaper. Ten florins seems 
an outrageous lot of money for a pane of broken 
glass. ” 

Ada did not answer. Perhaps he was right. 


8o 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


CHAPTER IX. 

MAYONNAISE. 

“So we understand each other perfectly,” said Joris ; 
and he stopped, and waited till the others came up. 
It was with evident pleasure that he resumed his 
place at Juffrouw Romeyn’s side. 

Yes, he was in an excellent temper. And he was 
looking forward with cheerful expectation to the lunch- 
eon he thought he had honestly earned. For there’s 
nothing like a good action for giving you a good 
appetite. ' And Joris Middelstum had broken his 
bread in solitude during the last five months. The 
few friends he had could not invite him to dinner till 
the height of his mourning band was a little less. 

“ We have been ordering the menu,” he said, gaily. 
“And now you must put all dismal recollections out 
of your head. I am a bit of an authority on these 
matters, you know, for a poor bachelor has to look 
after himself. ” 

“Yes,” replied Ada in good faith, “ I feel sure it 
must be very tiresome for you. It’s women’s work, 
and one can understand a man’s being bored by hav- 
ing to think of his dinner. ” 

She did not dare to make any more direct allusion 
to the cruel loss he had sustained. He had not men- 
tioned it. 

On the contrary, he burst out laughing, and rallied 
her on her womanly conceit. And he"^ launched at 
once into his favourite theories — he, the timid stay-at- 


A QUESTION- OF TASTE. 


8l 


home philosopher — about woman’s mission of cookery 
and her failure to accomplish it. “They were sent 
into the world to be good to children and to cook for 
men,” he cried. “ I believe they fulfil the first part 
of their task, but all the good cooks in the world are 
men. They have to be ; or the art would become 
extinct. Miss Romeyn. It is almost hovering on the 
verge of extinction already.” 

He went on a little too long about this favourite 
subject, as timid men are apt to do when they forget 
their timidity. And she began to think him rather 
“heavy on the hand,” as her countrymen express it, 
and to wonder whether he always thought of eating 
and drinking. He was probably one of the many 
selfish middle-aged men who look upon the unavoid- 
able routine of the day’s work as a preparation for the 
repose and repast of the evening. A melancholy 
existence of working that you may eat. For who 
could possibly be interested in taxes ? Yes, he was 
middle-aged. He was quite old. He must be past 
thirty. But he had a fine bearing, and — withal — a 
handsome face. 

‘ ‘ I have told your cousin to give you a dish, ” he 
said impressively, “a dish such as probably you have 
never tasted in your life. They make it to perfection 
at this place. And very few people can make it at 
all. It is extremely simple. Only ‘Mayonnaise.’ 
‘Nothing more.?’ you will say. ‘I have eaten it 
hundreds of times.’ Excuse me, if I differ from you. 
Not this one. Our Dutch housewives and their ser- 
vants cannot make Mayonnaise at all. They can 
only make salad dressing which they call by that 
name. My dear mother could make the true thing.” 

his voice sank — “I shall never taste that sauce 

again. ” 

She looked up at him quickly, surprised at the jest. 


82 A QUESTION OF TASTE. 

But his face was very serious, and a film had come 
over his eyes. 

“Good gracious, he means it!” she thought. 
And over her soul there crept for the first time in her 
life some vague, far-away conception of the wondrous 
mysteries of taste. A great vista opened up before 
her of delights and duties of which she knew noth- 
ing. 

“And you get it correctly prepared here,” she said 
humbly. 

“ Better than anywhere else,” he replied with great 
seriousness. “I discovered the house through an 
acquaintance of mine. It is not a first-rate restaurant, 
but the man’s wife is a Frenchwoman, and she helps 
in the kitchen. ” 

“And do you come over hereon purpose. Mynheer 
Middelstum .? ” 

He did not perceive that she was laughing at him. 
“Oh no,” he replied. “ I have only been here once 
before. But I know the thing can’t be got at home. 
I am very happy at the " Mille Colonnes, ’ where I 
always go for dinner. But they can’t make Mayon- 
naise there. You shall see ! Only wait. You shall 
see.” 

And they walked into the restaurant. 

“ Anton refuses to explain,” said Alfred, coming up 
to his sister and drawing her aside. “He says he 
was bound in honor to treat us all to this feast. I tell 
him that he is crazy, but that I shall do honour to his 
invitation. I’m as hungry as a bear. I don’t think, 
however, that the surroundings look particularly 
promising. ” 

“It’s not the surroundings that do it,” replied Ada, 
solemnly. ‘ ‘ What matters the outside ? This is an 
interior business. A business, mind you, not a vulgar 
pleasure. And altogether an affair of the inside,” 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


83 

Alfred shrugged his shoulders. You have all 
gone mad,” he said with brotherly frankness. “I 
suppose it is Middelstum’s doing. Only I wish there’d 
been nothing else cracked this morning besides those 
two heads of yours. ” 

It was true that there was not much to admire in 
the ' ‘ Private Room ” into which they had been 
ushered. The apartment bore signs of being used, 
when required, as the “salon” of the mistress of 
the house. Hideous engravings hung on the light- 
papered walls between white-curtained windows. 
The curtains were clean, but well-oiled heads had 
leant back from the dingy horse-hair sofa. And the 
engravings were of that dreadful period, some forty or 
fifty years ago, when artists were always depicting: 
“The Letter,” “The Parting,” “The Caress,” and 
when our mothers were all lackadaisical and willowy. 
The old ladies sit up straight enough now. 

“You shall see,” repeated Joris with radiant face, 
as he rejoined them after his confabulations with the 
landlady. “You are to have cups of bouillon, a 
mayonnaise of salmon and lamb cutlets with peas. 
Nothing else. It is the great rule in my estimation, 
and I live by it : ‘A little, and that little good.’ Your 
cousin has kindly left the wine to me ; have you 
not. Mynheer Dommers ? ” 

“ I never said anything of the kind — ,” began Anton, 
who was not feeling at all happy. 

“But you meant it,” interrupted Alfred, shortly. 
He had the sensation of a keeper who is out with his 
charge. 

Joris beamed on them all. He felt young again, 
and yet paternal. And his great enjoyment, as he 
walked round the slowly preparing table, was to 
repeat to this simple Dutch girl, that she would now 
learn what French cookery meant. “It is an art 


84 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


over there," he said, “ with its schools and its pro- , 
fessors. I had almost said its priests ! In Holland ^ 
it is merely a means of stilling hunger. And no man \ 
can eat who is hungry. He can only devour." 

The cloth and its accessories had appeared with 
promising but deceptive rapidity. Then a long 
break had intervened, and this had in its turn been 
interrupted by the arrival of a bottle of claret and 
a bottle of champagne. Joris found that his talk 
must once more divert into another channel, and he 
was astonished to find how readily the subjects came 
to hand. The dingy waiter brought in at long inter- 
vals — bread, and then butter, mustard, pepper, and 
finally salt. Anton stood by the window, humming a 
tune and gazing out. He looked, what he was, a 
discontented boy, all down the long length of his 
anatomy, from his crop of yellow hair to his feet. 

^^Mademoiselle est servie,'’ cried Joris at last. He 
waited a moment to give Anton time, and then, as 
that young gentleman marched moodily to the table, 
the gallant financial functionary handed Miss Ada to 
the seat at the head. There was a certain air of 
solemnity in his manner as he eyed the creamy Mayon- 
naise curled up in thick ripples of velvety richness, 
soft and smooth. “This is an event in your life, 
Mejuffrouw," he said. And with his own hand, 
slowly and lovingly, he laid the golden mixture upon 
her plate in a little lump that might almost have seemed 
solid but for the perfect smoothness of its symmetri- I 
cally rounded contours. 

“ Why, it’s only a Mayonnaise," said Anton, scowl- 
ing across the table. 

“Only that. Mynheer Dommers," replied Joris. 
“Nothing else, in its sublime simplicity. Just as a 
man might say a diamond is only a bit of glass, but 
all bits of glass are not diamonds, " 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 85 

“ My name is Trommels/’ said Anton, “ if you have 
no objection.” 

‘‘I am very sorry,” said Joris, quickly. “I beg 
your pardon. I am truly sorry. I misunderstood my 
friend Romeyn. Come, let us drink a glass of cham- 
pagne in honour of this morning’s meeting. New 
friends, new pleasures, Juffrouw ! ” 

The toast was drunk, with such enthusiasm as the 
two gentlemen could summon up. 

“Yes, it is different from ours,” said Ada, who had 
been dutifully tasting her sauce. ‘ ‘ I don't know that 
I am quite sure it is nicer. It is much thicker, of 
course. ” 

“ So it ought to be,” answered Joris, who had been 
busy with the wine-cooler, “ that’s just it.” 

“Yes, that’s better. I’m sure. But there’s a little 
taste — a little French taste, I suppose, which I don’t 
think is quite — quite as nice as I had hoped. What 
do you say, Anton .? ” 

‘ ‘ I think it’s beastly, ” said young Anton, his eyes 
fixed intently on his plate. 

“Ah, Juffrouw, that’s because you’re not accus- 
tomed to it,” said Joris, taking no notice of Anton’s 
rudeness, and thinking in his heart how useless it was 
to cast pearls before — to teach the fair sex the differ- 
ence between an omelette and a pancake. “You 
couldn’t eat a sauce of Dutch manufacture, if you 
hadn’t been accustomed to it from your youth.” 

“Well, it’s a pity we weren’t accustomed to this 
before we tried it,” said Alfred. 

Strange perversity of the human race ! They had 
all set their faces against being taught better. Joris 
slowly bathed his first piece of salmon in the luscious 
liquid and made up his mind to enjoy his Mayonnaise 
alone. 

“I think I would rather eat my fish without,” 


86 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 

hazarded Ada, in much fear and trembling, “unless it 
vexes you very much.” 

Joris laid down his fork. An expression of pain and 
disgust came over his features. He had not heard 
Ada’s last words. 

The Mayonnaise was spoiled. 

“It isn’t eatable,” he said in a husky voice. And 
an unfeeling roar of laughter greeted his words. 
Alfred laughed from inborn perversity and satirical 
scorn of all human weakness, Anton laughed in 
fierce joy and resplendent triumph, and Ada, after a 
moment’s struggle, laughed too, because of the comi- 
cality of the thing. They all laughed in peals of resist- 
less merriment, and none of them, except Ada, tried 
to stop because they saw that Joris was not laughing 
too. 

He was deeply mortified, for, most detestable of all 
experiences, he had been betrayed by himself. If 
they laughed, it was at him, and because he had 
started the fun. He could not even console himself 
with the fact that his discomfiture supplied the little 
party with gaiety which had been lacking hitherto. 

And yet it was so, for the others cheered up and 
remained quite uproariously conversational, even 
after they had dropped all allusions to his defeat. Yet 
Ada could not help twitting him on the excellence of 
restaurant-cooking, and the great advantages which 
the bachelors enjoyed over all those unhappy mortals 
who had to eat their dinners at home. In vain he 
defended himself. Could he help it if the wretched 
woman used eggs which were not quite so fresh as 
they ought to be ? 

“Oh, no,” said Ada, “you know we never have 
any other at home. ” 

“And yet I wager,” cried poor Joris, driven to 
desperation, “that even with the freshest of new-laid 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 87 

eggs, nor you nor any Dutch woman could produce 
a perfect Mayonnaise ! ” 

“I accept the wager ! ” she replied, recklessly, with 
flashing eyes. It was after her second glass of cham- 
pagne. “And the one who wins may ask of the 
other what he will.” 

“Within certain bounds,” said Joris, who could 
stand more champagne. 

“You are ungallant. Mynheer! I made no such 
restriction. But you need not be alarmed. I shall 
not be as bad as Herodias, and demand the head — in 
a pan — of the cook of the ‘ Mille Colonnes. ’ ” 

“ Hurrah ! ” cried Anton. “ Long live the women 
of Holland 1 There’s not a race in all the world can 
hold a candle to them for beauty and goodness 1 ” 

“That, Mynheer,” replied Joris, stung at last into 
retort, “is a truism.” 

And herein all Dutchwomen will agree with Joris 
Middelstum. 

As also does their humble servant, his biographer. 


88 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


CHAPTER X. 

FINANCE. 

JoRis sat in his sanctum at the Ministry of Finance. 
Before him lay a thick pile of documents relative to 
the question whether a certain small farmer in Drenthe 
should have been taxed for six windows or for five. 
The farmer had protested, and the investigation had 
already cost the Nation thirteen times the trifling 
amount of the tax. 

Punctual and painstaking as he was by nature and 
by habit, Joris Middelstum had for the moment en- 
tirely forgotten Thys Siever’s windows ; he was reca- 
pitulating yesterday’s experiences, and trying to make 
out why it was that they had left so distinct a mark 
upon his mind. 

Nothing was indifferent to him in connection with 
this unexpected meeting, not even the littlest little- 
nesses of his little day. Well, you see, his was not a 
big life, no murders, nor magnificent passions, not 
even an intrigue with somebody else’s wife, and his 
story must naturally be a quiet one, smooth and still 
as the sleepy water that creeps through the streets of 
his native town. He was not a man of the world, not 
even of his little world ; he was simply a clear-headed, 
hard-working Government official, with a pair of well- 
broken hobbies, a palate, and a weakness for all that 
is simple and straightforward and kind. His life had 
suddenly become a lonely one, for his heart had been 


A QUESTlOJ\r OF TASTE. S9 

lifted one stormy night out of its bed of softest eider- 
down and cast forth upon the howling dyke. 

And the memory of his mother was very tender in 
the thoughts of this bearded man of thirty-four. 

And — oh, my sisters — he was selfish, like the best 
of us, and mixed up with the memory of the dear 
hand which had prepared them was the memory of 
the flesh-pots, which would be prepared no more. 

He could not recall without a deep sense of mortifi- 
cation the utter collapse of his theories in the presence 
of one of the very few women to whom he had ever 
expounded them. He realized how the little story 
would be repeated at one tea-table after another, and 
how all the maids and matrons who heard it would tri- 
umph in his downfall. He felt sure that, even if Ada 
should prove magnanimous — and he gave her credit for 
more mischief than magnanimity — that wretch Antony 
Drommels, undoubtedly a lovesick swain, would un- 
dertake a round of visits to all his female acquaint- 
ances on purpose to give them a description of this 
defeat of bachelordom. And so preoccupied was 
Joris by his own way of considering the matter, that 
it never entered into his head that he had practically 
been wedded to his mother s all-providing affection, 
and had never really earned his spurs as a bachelor 
at all. 

‘^Oh, but my mother,” he said to himself again 
this morning, “my mother was — well ! — my mother, 
you know. And, as if that would not have been 
enough for an ordinary man, she was perfection into 
the bargain. It s no use comparing with her.” 

He said this the more earnestly, because he felt 
that Ada Romeyn had made a certain impression 
upon him. He had admired her frankness, her easy, 
honest familiarity and want of affectation. There was 
a charming smoothness in her relations with you, he 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


go 

said, which came of straightforwardness and simple- 
heartedness, and which he had so often missed 
in his intercourse with finer ladies. He did not for 
one moment take into account in how far the pecu- 
liar circumstances of their introduction to each other 
had facilitated this setting aside of all ceremony and 
constraint, or in how far he himself had been put 
at his ease by the consciousness of his momentary 
superiority. Ada’s character, therefore, got all the 
benefit of her clumsiness. None the less, he did not 
overlook the clumsiness. He regretted it — deeply. 
Too deeply. For he told himself that Romeyn’s 
sister was a pleasant little girl, a trustworthy little 
girl, nothing particular, but trustworthy. And in 
that case her clumsiness need not have annoyed him 
as much as it did. Only that he was a punctilious 
individual, and too apt to fidget about trifles. 

A knock came at the door, and one of the messen- 
gers attached to the office announced that a gentle- 
man of the name of Romeyn was asking to see 
Mynheer. 

“Let him come up,” said Joris with alacrity. He 
was actually pleased at the idea of seeing Alfred again. 
They could talk over yesterday’s incidents. Of 
course he came to pay the thirty-seven florins. Well, 
he had lost no time. 

But Alfred, when he made his appearance, proved 
far from talkative. He dangled his hat between his 
legs with an awkwardness many degrees removed 
from his usual assurance. And to Joris’s questions 
he answered chiefly “ yes ” and “ no.” 

He grew eloquent for a moment on the subject of 
his bellicose cousin, whom he abused, and most 
unjustly described as a swashbuckler with a talent for 
stumbling over his sword. Joris did not object to 
this aspersion of the lanky officer. He agreed, in his 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. gt 

heart, with the unfavorable verdict thus pronounced, 
which his acute observation, as he thought, had 
already forestalled. ‘ ‘ I can always tell a man’s 
worth at a glance,” said Joris to himself — as we all 
do. 

“Your cousin seemed to me an estimable young 
man,” he replied, “but young, very young. It is a 
fault, alas ! which corrects itself. ” 

“ He’s not younger than I,” remarked Alfred. 
“But you needn’t remain a fool till your brain grows 
through your hair.” 

This is true, and Joris felt called upon neither to 
affirm nor to deny it in the particular case already 
before him. A silence fell on the two men, and the 
official, whose time was not his own, cast a cautious 
glance at the clock. 

“Look here. Mynheer Middelstum,” the poet sud- 
denly blurted out. “I came to ask you to wait 
about that money. It isn’t much, I know — that is to 
say, it’s enough to owe. But it doesn’t look much 
to pay till you haven’t got it. And I don’t want to 
tell my mother, don’t you see ? ” 

“Yes,” said Joris, putting the tips of his fingers 
together, and thinking. 

“It’s no use getting my sister into trouble. Our 
mother isn’t so— isn’t so very — easy-going, ^ as you 
know, and, well — murder must out — there isn’t too 
much money to spare at home. There, I’ve done it. 
I wish you’d let me wait till I could pay you without 
telling her anything about it.” 

“Dear me, very good-natured of him,” thought 
Joris. “Shows more consideration on his part for 
his sister than I should have thought probable. But 
why ever does he object to telling me that they’re not 
well off.? I know that.” 

For Joris had not that kind of sensitiveness. When 


^2 ^ QUESTION OF TASTE. 

he had been so poor just after his father’s death, he 
had felt rather proud of it. 

“Certainly,” he said, “ and when shall we say that 
you wish to pay me ” 

“Oh, I shall pay you soon enough. Mynheer. As 
soon as my new drama is taken by the Manager of 
the Rotterdam Theatre, I shall have money enough 
and to spare. ” 

“And when do you think that will be?” asked 
Joris, with a sheet of paper spread out before him. 

‘ ‘ I have been waiting for his answer for the last 
five months. He said he would let me have it in 
ten days ! But I am in no hurry, because his keep- 
ing it shows, of course, that he is going to take it.” 

The hungry look in his eyes belied his words. 

“What a shame!” ejaculated Joris, sympathet- 
ically, ‘ ‘ although I fear you are no exception to the 
rule.” 

“ Oh it isn’t a shame,” replied Alfred eagerly. “ It 
is perfectly unavoidable, I assure you, when a work 
is under serious consideration. ” 

“So much the worse for the victims,” said Joris. 
“Well, shall we put the first of January — that is 
nearly nine months hence— as the date on which the 
money is to be finally refunded ? Or would you pre- 
fer to bind yourself to monthly instalments? ” 

“ Of four florins ? ” said the poet with great dig-nitv. 
“No, hardly, Myifheer.” 

Joris felt uncomfortable. He had not realised 
the smallness of the sum, and had spoken from 
habit. For Joris was one of those unfortunates 
who are always Jending money. They seem born 
with the inscription “ Apply within ” on their fore- 
heads. But many men found themselves disap- 
pointed afterwards by the accuracy of his book- 
keeping. He had an idea that it was a crime towards 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


93 

a poor man, and an insult towards a rich one, to lend 
money and not to ask for it back again. “ It is a busi- 
ness transaction just like any other," he said. And 
so he wrote receipts and exacted instalments and 
made himself generally objectionable. This manner 
of lending money procures a man more downright, 
swearing enemies than any other form of nastiness. 
For we all know that the man of feeling who lends 
money adopts that form of giving it so as to avoid 
the painfulness of thanks. I don’t know the man of 
feeling, but I know all about him. I have often met 
him in books, but not to speak to. 

And Joris thought he was doing Alfred a kindness, 
and treating him with all the due regard to his sense 
of honour, when he made out a proper I. O. U. and 
passed it over to him to sign. But Alfred was a poet, 
and not a financial authority — by any means — and 
he considered these business matters from an entirely 
different point of view, — from the feet of Jove where 
he reclined. He considered that Middelstum ought 
to have been free and easy and “ oh, never mind ; any 
time will do," and all that kind of thing. And per- 
haps, if ultimately Joris had forgotten the debt, Alfred, 
who had far sublimer thoughts than pounds, shillings 
and pence, would have forgotten it, too. 

All the same, he had really acted to shield his sister, 
and the visit to Joris was a genuine sacrifice on his 
part. It was extremely painful to him to have to say : 

if you please " to any man. Not an amiable quality. 
Well, that can’t be* helped. Some very vain men 
have it. And also some very sensitive ones. No, it 
is not true that all sensitive men are inordinately 
vain. 

Alfred Romeyn was not unprecedentedly vain. He 
only thought himself a divine genius and most other 
men very second-rate fools, 


94 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


But his half-dozen superiors he admired and loved 
with that whole-hearted discriminating passion which 
only a Milton can bestow upon a Shakespeare. 

“ He needn’t have made such a fuss about it,” he 
said to himself. “One would think I had come to 
take over the National Debt.” 

“And now that is settled,” remarked Joris, folding 
up the paper. “I hope, as I was saying, that your 
sister has felt no evil effects from the shock. ” 

“Her hat has,” replied Alfred, grimly. He was 
still less conversationally inclined now he had been 
forced to sign his name, but, nevertheless, Middelstum 
kept him standing, even after he had got up to go 
away. And with the greatest coolness the vanquished 
boaster of the day before recapitulated his fine theories 
to Alfred’s unwilling ears, and told him how the edu- 
cation of our women was neglected, and how useless 
it was to say that such work could be left to the ser- 
vants ; as well declare that bricklayers could do their 
work without an architect, or that engine-drivers 
stood in no need of an engineer. It was evident, 
then, that no man in his senses would marry a 
woman, of whatever rank, unless she could cook. 

It was evident, moreover . 

“ Good-bye, Mynheer,” said Alfred Romeyn. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


95 


CHAPTER XL 

HOPS, AND A FALL. 

There had been a fine disturbance when the young 
folks got home. And no one need be surprised at 
Ada’s preferring to keep her secret, even at the price 
of shifting a great part of its weight on to her brother s 
stronger shoulders. 

It was a tiresome ending to a pleasant day. For 
the day had been fairly pleasant, and even the 
crockery crash would have seemed quite supportable 
had the purses of the Romeyns shown better linings. 
The whole party had returned to the Exhibition-build- 
ings after lunch, in spite of the painful memories now 
connected with the place. 

They had returned because Joris had suddenly 
remembered that he had missed seeing the entomo- 
logical collection, after all. 

And he had remembered it, when Ada screamed 
because Alfred said there was a spider on her shoulder. 

Alfred might have said it, even if the spider had 
not been there ; for poets, and brothers, have a habit 
of seeing insects invisible to the naked eye — but, as 
it happened, the spider was. He had “all the ad- 
vantages of a quiet, comfortable home” at the French 
landlady’s, and it was cruel of Anton to annihilate 
him with one sweep of his great rough paw. 

The paw rested very lightly for a moment on the 
fair lady’s shoulder. 

“ Don’t crush him,” cried Joris. “ Let me see him 


gS A QUESTION- OF TASTE. 

first. There are some very good spiders in these 
marshy parts.” 

“Ugh ! the monsters ! ” said Ada with a shudder. 
She threw back her head and cast nervous glances at 
as much of her shoulder as she could get a glimpse of. 

“Here he is,” said Anton, opening his hand, and 
showing a little, damp, dark lump with a protruding 
limb on his forefinger. He was oveijoyed that the 
dead spider had “ done up so small.” 

“I see you don't like spiders,” said Joris, with a 
shrug of his shoulders. ‘ ‘ I am sorry for you — for I 
can assure you they are most interesting animals.” 
And he talked about spiders to Ada, in spite of her 
incipient protests, all the way back to the Exhibition. 
Towards the end she began to feel quite interested, 
in spite of herself, as he told her of the wondrous 
trap-spider and of the habits of the spider-catcher, 
and recited to her the old Greek legend of Arachne 
and the comparatively modern British story of the 
Bruce. In one word he preached quite a little sermon 
from his unattractive text; he was “insufferable,” 
said Anton to Alfred and Alfred to Anton, comment- 
ing on such fragments as they unavoidably heard. 
But Ada soon found him extremely entertaining, for, 
indeed, he was in no wise pedantic, but very simple 
about what he knew, and amusing. He launched 
into a short survey of the venerable spider's position 
in the folk-lore and superstitious beliefs of various 
nations : 

“ Araignee du matin, chagrin. 

Araignee du midi, plaisir. 

Araignee du soir, espoir.” 

he said. “Do you see, you should not have screamed 
out at your spider and slaughtered him, for he brought 
you happiness,” 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


97 


“I don’t see that,” she said, rather ungraciously. 

“It’s got to come round. You must wait,” and 
they went on down the narrow streets of the little 
town, which are said to be sleepy at that hour. The 
oldest inhabitant has never known them otherwise. 
They went on, he expounding, and she listening. 
She was surprised and charmed. Everybody always 
talked in her set, but nobody ever talked about any- 
thing. 

She went meekly with him over the various cases, 
trying to understand, though she could not share, the 
raptures into which he fell over a very complete col- 
lection of native coleoptera. “My butterflies are 
much better than this man’s,” he repeated, frankly, 
“but I have got nothing like his set of scarabaei 
proper. Dear, dear, where can he have got them 
from .? ” 

She tired of the new subject, however, long before 
he did, and she was not sorry ultimately to find her- 
self in the train. 

“ How late is it, Anton?” she asked her cousin, as 
they were speeding away in the direction of home, 
and visions of the Major began to gather in distinct- 
ness. Anton blushed crimson. Fair faces, however 
sunburnt they are, seem always to remain capable of 
increasing redness. 

“ I don’t know,” he stammered, “ I forgot to bring 
my watch with me.” 

“Nonsense, you had it this morning, because I 
asked you what o’clock it was half-a-dozen times over, 
while we were coming down. How can you tell such 
fibs, Anton ? You’re too lazy to unbutton your uni- 
form.” 

“I mean I forgot to wind it up,” stammered Anton. 

It’s stood still.” 

“ Wind it up then at once, and don’t let it spoil. I 

7 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


98 

know it’s a keyless one. Mynheer Middelstum, will 
you tell me how late it is ? ” 

“See her bully him!” thought Alfred. “Serves 
him right, too, for letting her know he’s in love with 
her, without telling her plainly. They always do then. ” 
“It wants ten minutes to five,” said Joris, solemnly. 
“ I know I am right, because I never pass a station- 
clock without comparing. I have never done other- 
wise ever since I got my first watch as a boy. ” 

“ Thank you. Mynheer Middelstum,” responded 
Anton with all due dignity. “ I do not think I need 
trouble you to tell me the time. I am quite well 
aware what o’clock it is. ” 

“ Child ! ” thought Joris. “He is in love with her, 
and evidently thinks I am going to put down my name 
as a rival. ” He laughed outright at this idea, so much 
so that he had to fix his attention on the cows in the 
meadows. Joris Middelstum in the character of a 
lover I It was too comical not to call forth a grin — 
at the very least. 

“ He left his watch with the restaurant-keeper, of 
course,” said Alfred, as brother and sister walked 
home together. “It’s as 'clear as coffee.’ I can’t 
imagine what made him rush into such extravagance, 
and without the necessary funds in his purse, too.” 

“Conceit,” said the cruel one. “ He didn’t want 
Mynheer Middelstum to outshine him.” 

“Well, you will have to set yourself to winning your 
wager now. And what will you ask of the old fellow, 
if you do ? ” 

“I! Oh, nothing. It was only nonsense. You 
don’t imagine he thought I meant it ? ” 

“ I don’t know. You might ask him to let you off 
those thirty-seven florins we owe him.” 

“Alfred, how can you say such horrid things I” 
Mevrouw Romeyn knew that the young people of 


A QUESTION OF TASTE- 


99 

this generation were not to be trusted out alone. She 
knew it. She had always known it. Considering, 
therefore, that the fact was no new thing to her, it 
seemed astonishing that she should grow so eloquent 
over it. She discussed it, and declaimed against it, 
all through the evening, and into next day, so that 
she had evidently slept on it during the night. But 
Ada received her reproaches with a good deal of in- 
difference. She had other things to occupy her mind. 
She lay awake for some time reviewing the events of 
her excursion. And, like Joris, she felt that she had 
cause both for much mortification and for a certain 
amount of gratification, too. She could not recall the 
tumble into the dinner things without feeling hot all 
over, even in the solitude of her own dark room. She 
hated herself for doing these stupid things. But, on 
the other hand, this man, who was so much older and 
so much wiser, had shown her very marked attention 
and been altogether most courteous and entertaining. 
It was pleasant to think that people liked you. Ada 
lighted her candle again and looked at her face in the 
glass. 

Light at this hour ! ” called out her mother’s all- 
pervading voice behind the partition. “What’s the 
matter .5^ Put it out.” 

She put it out and went to sleep. I don’t think she 
would have minded much, poor girl, if she had never 
heard that voice again. 

She had not reckoned, however, on the storm which 
now burst over her head. And indeed nothing could 
be more unfortunate than that Mevrouw Romeyn’s 
little hardnesses of heart should receive such a fresh 
tightening and squeezing as befel them at this very 
moment. For the moisture and softness which still 
remained were thereby very nearly completely elimi- 
nated. 


100 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


The Major was in a high state of suppressed excite- 
ment at lunch. She snorted and snapped, and, as 
she watched Ada cutting the bread and butter for 
their frugal meal, she broke into various little gurgles 
and impatient exclamations, as was her wont when 
she was pretending to struggle against her temper. 
For she struggled with the natural violence of her 
temper. It was the consciousness of so doing which 
permitted her to give it righteous vent at times. There 
is no worse example of fiendish ill-nature to be found 
anywhere than among the men who know they have 
a bad temper, but keep it well in hand. Yes, yes, 
there is still the individual who knows he is “quick- 
tempered but not ill-tempered,” — and says it. 

“There,” burst out the Major — she always exploded 
at the end of her struggles. ‘ ‘ Now you can see it for 
yourself ! You have laughed. And now you can go 
on laughing, Mejuffrouw ! It’s others may cry.” 

As she spoke, she threw a letter across to — or at — 
her daughter, with a sudden violent fling, as if of 
pleasure at the thought of the pain it would occasion 
her. 

Ada took the letter and read it. It was from a 
brother-in-law of the Major’s, an old man of the name 
of Boksman, who had been married to her only sister 
many years ago. This Boksman was a wealthy 
brewer at Maestricht, deep down in the southernmost 
south of Holland ; he had been for many years a 
widower, and he doted on his only child, a girl of Ada’s 
age, with an adoration akin to idolatry. On one 
occasion only had the Romeyns seen this rich uncle 
and cousin ; namely, during a six weeks’ stay at 
Scheveningen which the brewer had acquiesced in a 
year or two ago, when his daughter Sibylla was 
taken with a passion for sea-bathing. During those 
three weeks Sibylla had naturally been very much 


A QUESTION- OF TASTE. lOi 

with her cousins, and when she took leave of them 
to return to her out-of-the-way residence, she vouch- 
safed them the frank information that she thought 
Alfred A- 1, but that Ada was the meanest thing that 
ever was or would be. 

It was this uncle who now wrote as follows to his 
sister-in-law. The letter was short and business-like. 
The worthy brewer had only two ideas in his head ; 
beer and Sibylla. He had never experienced any need 
of a third : 


Brewery of the Two Black Ravens and 
the Broken Cross, 

Maestricht. 

Dear Sister-in-law : 

Sibylla has been asked in marriage by two eligible 
young men of this town within the last nine months. 
She tells me one was a grand gentleman, which I 
daresay is true, as he has no occupation. The other 
was a hop-merchant and if she had taken him, I 
should have laid down my head in peace, for the two 
businesses would have united splendidly. But Provi- 
dence decreed that it should not be so, for Sibylla 
wouldn’t have him. She tells me she has made up 
her mind to marry your Alfred, the very last man I 
should have chosen for her. She barely knows him, 
and I daresay, when she sees more of him, she will 
change her opinion. And if she doesn’t, I suppose 
there’s no more to be said. I therefore have a pro- 
posal to make. You can come over with Alfred and 
stay here for a couple of months — he can’t come alone 
— and, if Sibylla sticks to her decision, you must stay 
altogether. Should Sibylla take Alfred, he will enter 
the brewery at once. The engagement would last 
some time, as neither Sibylla nor I are anxious to part. 
Not that we should part, for we should all live to- 


102 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


gether. Don’t let Alfred reckon too surely on his good 
fortune, as I still trust Sibylla will understand that she 
ought to make a better match. 

I shall expect you by the first of next month ; that 
gives you three weeks to pack up. 

Your loving brother-in-law, 

Ignatius Boksman, Brewer. 

P, S. — ^This invitation does not, of course, include 
your daughter, whom you will have the goodness not 
to bring, as Sibylla dislikes her exceedingly. I dare- 
say she can stay with some of her probably numerous 
friends. 

P. P. S. — Is there no question as yet of your daugh- 
ter’s engagement ? She is four months older than 
Sibylla, who has already had several offers. 

Ada Romeyn laid down the letter with burning 
cheeks. But all that she said at first was : “The two 
postcripts are Sibylla’s. Uncle Boksman is as in- 
capable of adding them before she told him to do so, 
as of leaving them out after she had ordered him to 
put them in.” 

‘ ‘ Aha, you don’t like the postscripts ! ” cried the 
Major. “ Nor do I, but for a dift'erent reason. You 
are angry because you consider them false, I because 
I admit they are true. And why, pray, don’t people 
propose to you, as they propose to your cousin ? ” 

‘ ‘ Sibylla is rich ! ” began Ada. 

“And plain. You are poor and pretty. The second 
thing has a better chance, and with a better class of 
men.” 

“ And Sibylla wants to get married.” The phrase 
was an unfortunate one. 

“And you don’t,” cried the Major, growing purple. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 103 

**Ah, that’s what I’ve always said, Ada, and what 
you’ve always denied. And now you confess it your- 
self. It’s much easier to mope at home all day long 
and be slaved for by your mother. Catch you think- 
ing of anyone else but yourself. But we shall see 
what Alfred will say when he comes in and hears that 
his happiness, his whole future, is to be sacrificed to 
yours ! ” 

“What?” said Ada, in amazement. “Do you 
rnean to tell me that you take this digusting propo- 
sition seriously ? You are joking, mamma! Alfred 
will make short work of Sibylla’s impudence. He is 
far too proud to allow any man or woman to treat him 
in this manner, I can assure you.” 

“ I forbid you to go putting these ideas into the 
boy’s head. Your uncle’s offer is a very honourable 
and straightforward one.” 

“Alfred a brewer I ” his sister laughed aloud at the 
thought, but there was bitterness in her laugh. “I 
can see the poet among the beer-barrels ! Why, the 
only beverage he can mix is nectar, mamma ! ” 

* ‘ Of course I should have preferred an honourable 
profession,” replied the Major, “but, anyway, he has 
none. And I know nothing about Hector, except that 
your father always said he wasn’t as good a soldier as 
people thought. I don’t understand what you mean, 
Ada, but I warn you that if you prejudice Alfred’s 
mind against this splendid opportunity for gaining a 
competence, I shall know how to punish you. And 
you’re selfish enough to do it, too. You hear me ? ’ 
“Oh, yes, I hear you, mamma,” assented Ada. 
She pretended to be busy with her bread and honey 
cake, while she impatiently awaited Alfred’s vindica- 
tion of his honour and hers. 

Alfred came in late. Under ordinary circumstances 
this would have meant a bombardment, all the more 


104 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 

prolonged because the assaulted party neither hoisted 
a white flag nor returned fire. But this morning the 
Major was too preoccupied with her letter to waste 
time over preliminary skirmishings and she imme- 
diately thrust it under the sharp nose of her son. 

“Hum,” remarked the poet, with a supercilious 
glance over the luncheon-table. ‘ ‘ Bread and butter 
can wait. Let’s see what we have here. ” 

He took up the letter, surprised that his mother did 
not retort. The news it contained must be of some 
importance, requiring equanimity on his part. He 
read the two short pages through twice, breaking into 
a low whistle after a moment. His mother did not 
even stop the whistle. Then he laid down the paper, 
and a bright spot appeared on his pale cheeks. 

“ Well ? ” said the Major anxiously. 

“ Well ? ” repeated Alfred. 

But that brought them “no forrader. ” The Major’s 
tactics, however, had always been in moments of 
uncertainty to — ‘ ‘ charge. ” 

“ r understand your hesitation,” she cried. “At 
the first moment I also was taken aback by the form 
in which your uncle has clothed his proposal. But 
two minutes of reflection sufficed to convince me 
that he could not possibly have put it in a more deli- 
cate way. Don’t you see it would have been absurd 
for him to treat the matter seriously ? And therefore, 
serious as it is. he throws it into the form of a joke. 
It was the wisest thing he could do.” 

“ Y-es,” said Alfred, dubiously. 

“All this about ‘the last man he would have 
chosen’ and ‘expect her to change her opinion,’ 
surely you understand these are the last things a man 
would say, if he meant them. He says them- because 
he doesn’t mean them, but he can’t write as if he 
were throwing his daughter at your head. Properly 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


lOS 

appreciated, the letter is full of the natural delicacy 
of a rough but honourable nature.” 

‘ ‘ There’s a good deal in that, ” said Alfred, medi- 
tatively. He looked across at his sister. Ada was 
studying the pattern of the table-cloth. 

“ Of course you can always pervert anything from 
its natural meaning,” continued the Major, who had 
noticed the glance, “if you want to make things 
look black. But mine, I feel sure, is the only rational 
explanation. It makes everything cldar. And, taking 
your uncle’s offer in the spirit in wTHch he makes it, 
I must say it does honour both to his heart and his 
head.” 

This last sentence she repeated without much 
thought about its meaning. It was a quotation from 
an article in that morning’s paper. 

‘ ‘ And his purse, ” said Ada. 

‘ ‘ What do you mean, Ada ? ” asked Alfred, passion- 
ately. The vehemence with which he turned upon 
her revealed the storm which was raging in his 
breast. 

“ Nothing particular,” replied Ada, lightly. “ Only 
I thought that factor ought not to be forgotten. Yes, 
undoubtedly, as mamma says. Uncle Boksman’s offer 
is one to admire and accept. ” 

“I never said anything of the kind, my dear girl. 
Alfred must judge for himself, of course, it is my duty 
to help him with my advice.” 

“ I am glad it isn’t mine,” said Ada, quickly. “Yes, 
Alfred, you must judge for yourself, and Uncle Igna- 
tius is very rich.” 

“He is,” acquiesced the Major. “Oh, dear me, 
Alfred, he is.” 

“And Sibylla is. very plain,” said Alfred. 

‘ ‘ She is, Alfred, but plain women make the fondest 
and truest wives.” 


^ QUESTION OE TASTE. 


io6 

“ Not always an advantage under the circum- 
stances/' sneered the poet. 

“Alfred, your present occupation is ruining you. 
Of course, I should infinitely have preferred a respect- 
able profession, but in that you have thwarted me. 
You must take the consequences. And next to a pro- 
fession being rich and doing nothing is undoubtedly 
the best." 

“But I am not to do nothing. lam to brew," 
objected Alfred, taking up the letter again. 

‘ ‘ Begin by marrying Sibylla. The rest will ‘ find 
itself.' You see how fond he is of her." 

“ Humph," said Alfred. And after a pause he 
added : “ Mother, you were born a general." 

‘ ‘ And how about the fine, Alfred ? " asked Ada. 

‘ ‘ Oh, bother. Hold your tongue, if you can’t talk 
sense,” retorted her brother, impatiently. 

“Yes, indeed," added Mevrouw, who was smiling 
under her son's compliment. “ What do you mean, 
Ada, by talking about fines ? " 

“Not that Alfred will have to pay any," replied Ada. 
“And so it is decided ; Alfred goes in for Sibylla and 
beer.?" 

“ You are vulgar, child," said Mevrouw. But she 
looked anxiously from one to the other. 

Alfred had been standing staring out of the window, 
with his back turned to them. He faced round 
quickly at his sister’s words. His features were rigid 
with the fierceness of a great resolve. ‘ ‘ At least not 
no," he said. “Can't you write, mother, and tell him 
I’ll think of it?" 

“ ‘ Not no ’ is ' yes ' in this case," cried Ada. “ Oh 
Alfred — her voice faltered for a moment and she 
stopped short. 

At that moment the last stay of her heart fell away 
from her. She knew herself to be utterly alone and 


A QUESriON^ OF TASTE. 10 ^ 

deserted in this world of love, and of lovers ; as utterly- 
deserted and alone as one of the miserable women 
who cast themselves upon the streets, in a condition 
described by that sublime line of the great poet’s : 

“ Les fleurs au front, la haine au coeur, la boue aux pieds.” 

Her brother could surrender both his own honour 
and her happiness ; he could thrust-to the home-door 
in her face, if only somebody would provide him with 
a sofa to recline upon inside the house. 

‘‘You can’t let a lady wait,” said the Major, grin- 
ning, ‘ ‘ least of all for an answer to such a question 
as this. Discipline must be, you know.” 

“ Yes, I wish you would decide, Alfred,” added his 
sister, again speaking calmly, “because I also have 
my decision to take.” 

“ You ? ” asked Alfred, suddenly hesitating. “ Yes, 
that’s true. That bit about you is a most con- 
founded shame. ” 

“ Sibylla was always a high-spirited girl. She has 
been a little spoilt, and her jokes are often rough,” 
interposed the Major. “A woman’s influence will 
alter that. One must never forget that the poor girl 
has grown up without a mother’s care. Of course, 
we must make some satisfactory arrangement for 
Ada, but I cannot allow this consideration, Alfred, to 
stand between you and your good fortune.” 

“ It need do no such thing,” the girl began dog- 
gedly. She was desperate. “But look here, you 
two ” — her mother recoiled at the words, which smote 
her like a blow. “ If I offer no obstacle to Alfred’s 
settlement, you must help me with mine. I’m going 
to marry myself out, too. It seems to be quite 
the correct thing, after all, for a girl to offer herself, 
isn’t it, mother? Eh? Well, in any case, I shall do 


A QUESTION/ OF TASTE. 


io8 

it, and you must help me. You say you won’t let it 
be Anton Trommels. Well, I don’t much care whom 
we make it. I shall begin with Mynheer Middel- 
stum and see if he says no.” 

How much of this wild speech did she mean ? She 
could hardly have told herself. Alfred concluded she 
meant none of it. 

“Well, you’ll have to learn cookery and accounts 
then,” he sneered. “You can’t be too accurate about 
the second, and, as for the first, he has just been tell- 
ing me that he would never marry a woman who 
couldn’t cook thoroughly well.” 

‘ ‘ The very thing ! ” replied Ada. ‘ ‘ I thank you 
for the suggestion. I will make his Mayonnaise for 
him, and, when I have won our wager, I shall claim 
marriage as the prize. So you must ask him to come 
to this house, and we must see as much as we can 
of him meanwhile. Is that not the way ? ” 

“ I shall do no such thing,” said Alfred. 

“Why should that be wrong in me which is quite 
right and nice in Sibylla ? And must I not do my 
duty and get out of your way in time ? You must 
allow me an extra couple of months for the engage- 
ment, mother, before you turn me out.” 

“There can be no question of turning out ” 

began Alfred. 

“ He is a very respectable man, ” interrupted the 
Major. “And your uncle Trommels said his mother 
had left him in affluent circumstances. She might do 
much worse, Alfred. Yes, if she wishes it, we must 
certainly induce him to call.” 

“ Do, if you please,” said Ada, moving towards the 
door. “ My compliments, and I am willing to give 
him as much of my sauce as I can.” 

“ Ada,” cried her brother, “ this is nonsense. You 
can’t mean it. You wouldn’t do anything so 


A QUESTION’ OF TASTE. 


109 

** Silence, you ! ” she exclaimed, turning upon him 
with a blaze of scorn in her eyes. And she passed 
out of the room. 

‘ ‘ Ah, what a fall was there ! ” said Alfred to himself 
before the looking-glass. “ Yesterday with Apollo 
on Parnassus, to-morrow with Gambrinus among the 
beer-barrels. Oh money, money, for what are you 
not to blame ! How many great men hast thou not 
despoiled of their greatness, traitorous Fortune, by 
diverting their glance from the stars of heaven to the 
gold-pits of earth ! Never mind, I was laid in the 
cradle for a rich man, I have always felt that. And 
after a year or two, I shall return to my verses with 
redoubled ardour. Once a poet always a poet. 
Setnel poeta, semper poeta, as Middelstum’s friend, 
Maarten Maartens, says. My verses will probably 
be much the better for any change in my miserable 
lot. Perhaps they will lose some of their bitterness 
then.” 

“ But I shan’t ask that fellow Middelstum to come 
here,” he added, with great energy. I can’t think 
what has come to little Ada.” 


no 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


CHAPTER XIL 

SPIDERS AND FLIES. 

JoRis Middelstum came nevertheless. He considered 
it his duty to call after the day he had spent with 
the Romeyns at Dommelen. He called, therefore, 
wearily telling himself that a man must fulfil all his 
duties, even the social ones, which are the worst of 
any. And yet he liked the idea of seeing Ada again 
and having another talk with ‘ ‘ the bright, good- 
natured little thing.” Like most of his brethren, he 
abused the pleasures he profited by. And, like most 
of them also, he was quite as sincere in the enjoy- 
ment as in the abuse. 

The Major received him most graciously. She 
beamed upon him with her great red face, and she 
stamped with her heavy feet upon all the pet corns of 
his heart. It is wonderful what a number of corns a 
carefully-tended bachelor’s heart can develop, little 
hard spots, here, there and everywhere, on which 
somebody is always pressing, and then they hurt. 
The patter of children’s feet is apt to smooth away the 
hardnesses. But Mevrouw Romeyn was one of those 
people who woul I have found out your corn, if you 
had had only one. And she would have stamped on 
it, when found. 

She magnanimously forgave Middelstum’s mother, 
and she told him so half-a-dozen times in what she 
considered an indirect manner. **Yes, she had no 
quarrels with the dead. ” She ‘ ‘ forgave others when 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


lit 


they had injured her as she herself hoped to be for- 
given.” She “knew that some people had their 
peculiarities, and you must make allowance for them.” 
“ Everybody can’t look at the same matter in the 
same manner. If they did, where would be the 
distinction between right and wrong ? ” 

Decidedly, Joris Middelstum must have found Adas 
company more agreeable than he had realised at first. 
For he continued to call. He dropped in of evenings, 
the Major having most cordially invited him to do so. 
With Juffrouw Romeyn he talked about butterflies, 
not about earwigs as yet. She drew the line at ear- 
wigs, and thereby the thoughtful student of her 
fortunes can mark the limit of her increasing interest 
in Joris. And the ardent entomologist also talked 
of spiders. And he dropped, of evenings, into Mev- 
rou w Romeyn’s little parlour. It was not ‘ ‘ the pret- 
tiest little parlour that ever you did spy.” Even he 
did not think that. But it did as well 

It was considerably more cheerful, at any rate, 
than a semi-public reading-room, with the same old 
gentleman snoring nightly in the same arm-chair, or 
his own sanctum, withDientjecroonidg : “Oh, mother 
dear, my sailor boy ” over and over again to herself 
in the kitchen. Here, at least, was a serious, kindly 
face that brightened up to welcome him, with a pair 
of faithful blue eyes and a shimmer of sunny hair. 
And sometimes Mevrouw Romeyn would go down- 
stairs and bring Alfred a cup of tea. 

“ The poor boy works very hard,” she said. “ And 
at what ? At nothing. Mynheer Middelstum. At 
worse than nothing. He writes verses. ” She would 
stop away as long as if she were helping him in this 
useless work. Alfred avoided seeing this frequent 
visitor as much as possible. He was writing a fare- 
>vell epic in twenty-five cantos — an “Adieu to the 


II2 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


Muses ” — before he definitely turned his thoughts to 
brewing. He finished three cantos in thirteen days. 

Joris did not always inquire after him. And, when 
he inquired, he did not always listen for the answer. 
He found out that the Romeyns had — or thought they 
had — a coat of arms, a Roman warrior on a field of 
blood, and he betook himself to reproducing this 
heraldic emblem with great care and an abundance 
of flourish round the helmet and shield. Ada was 
truthfully delighted by the discovery of this new 
talent, which she could not help preferring to the in- 
sects, but it was especially Mevrouw Romeyn who 
felt drawn by cords of gentility towards her son-in- 
law in spe. Could anything be ‘ ‘ nicer than the 
study of heraldry .? The ladies went over to Mid- 
delstum’s house, escorted by the unwilling Alfred, on 
purpose to view his really beautiful collection of 
drawings. They saw the butterflies at the same time. 
And Ada could heartily express her admiration of the 
butterflies. To the Major they could only present 
fhemselves in the light of “ make-ups ” for bonnets, 
and she found it impossible to disconnect them from 
this idea in her mind. But she hung enchanted over 
the artificial blazonry, till she was purple in the face 
and had to gasp for breath. As is the case with most 
people, whether connoisseurs or otherwise, who take 
an interest in these matters, her interest confined 
itself to her own family and its connections, and she 
was delighted to find some of these represented, as 
they naturally would be, in Middelstum’s port- 
folios. Her maternal great-grandmother had been a 
“ Broome she discovered that Joris’s mother had 
had a “ Broome” in her family also, a couple of hun- 
dred years ago. The name was the same ; undoubt- 
edly the blood must be the same also. She was 
delighted at this discovery of a relation of hers among 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


“3 

the ancestors of her who had always been “the beg- 
garly Baroness” before. She forgot the “beggar- 
liness ” on the spot. She even felt a kind of sneaking 
unconfessed tenderness for the dead woman whose 
seventeenth-century grandmother had actually been 
a Broome. 

She talked about her relations all the way home, 
told her stock stories about her father the lieutenant- 
colonel, “ Old Blazes Trommels,” who had once said 
“ No ” to Napoleon when ordered to retire before the 
enemy, and had received for it degradation and the 
Legion of Honour, and about her great-aunt who had 
hidden all the family papers in the stove at the time 
of the revolutionary troubles and had forgotten them 
when the servant went to light the fire. It is amaz- 
ing to think how old everybody’s family would be, if 
paper were not such an inflammable article. - 

Joris listened to these stories with reverent interest. 
He felt towards them as you feel when you come into 
contact for the first time with a very old man whom 
you have never met before, but whom you now ex- 
pect frequently to meet again. It is always a touch- 
ing experience. 

He liked going to the Romeyns all the better be- 
cause he began to tire about this time of the restau- 
rant-dinners which he had enjoyed so much at first. 
It was inexplicable to him why it should be so, but 
the undeniable fact remained that the cooks at these 
places always began to cook less well as soon as he 
had got a little accustomed to the ways of the house. 
You might almost have thought they did it on pur- 
pose, had that idea not been too absurd. No, it was 
an evil fate which pursued him. He deserted the 
“ Mille Colonnes ” and passed across the road to the 
“ Lion de Hollande.” The cuisine at this new place 
was delicious, a great improvement on the other ; he 


II4 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


felt quite happy again. But after a few days he no- 
ticed the same falling-off, there seemed to be but lit- 
tle variety and — he rubbed the tip of his tongue gently 
against his teeth — there was a taste — a taste — no, de- 
cidedly, the salmi was not so good as last Wednes- 
day. “ Tell them not to put in too much pepper,” 
he said to the waiter. And the waiter bowed a 
waiter's eternal acquiescence. But there was too 
much pepper in next day’s dishes, none the less. 

He left the “Lion de Hollande” and tried the 
‘ ‘ Couronne d’Orange. ” The ‘ ‘ Couronne d’Orange ” 
had a perfect chef, but the waiter who served him 
would have done better to wear gloves. But waiters 
don’t wear gloves, and so Joris moved to the “Hotel 
des Pays Bas,” which was everything that could be 
desired— at least at first ! It was even situated near 
the Zuiderstraat, where the Romeyns lived, so that he 
could naturally wend his footsteps thither, when he 
rose from his solitary meal. 

But after a week or so, he realised that the “ Hotel 
des Pays Bas ” had one sauce for all its meat dishes, 
and that the said sauce was made with “ Cibils.” 


A QUESTION' OF TASTE. 


”5 


CHAPTER XIII. 

FOLLOWING UP THE TRACK. 

And of what was the little spider thinking, as it sat 
next to its mamma-spider in the middle of the web.? 

It would be difficult to say. The young-lady- 
spider did not know. But that is no excuse for any- 
one else’s ignorance, for we often read a stranger’s 
thoughts much clearer than he can read them himself. 
But in this case it is impossible to analyse the thinker’s 
thoughts. For she did not think them. They merely 
fell into her mind and rolled about there. Oh, shade 
of Locke, forgive the words ! And pity one who can- 
not express himself more clearly, because so many 
years have passed over his hard head since it vainly 
essayed to understand thine essay on the human 
understanding. 

Well, all the same, she didn’t think ; she didn’t try ; 
she didn’t wish. One resolve was uppermost in her 
consciousness, and that was the resolve to do this 
thing she was resolved on, though why she could 
scarcely tell. She must get away from home ; nay, 
she was driven from it. She had never expected her 
own flesh and blood would let matters go thus far. 
But experience had taught her otherwise. It had 
taught her, besides, that no one disapproved of 
Sibylla’s behaviour, at least, the Major did not. And 
every girl, however much she may differ from her 
mother, still always retains a certain respect for that 
mother’s notions of proprietj^. The mother remains 


ii6 


A QUESTION' OF TASTE. 


the priestess of ^‘womanly-hood,” whom nothing but 
the most flagrant scandal can drive from its temple. 

But Ada Romeyn did not think out all this. She 
knew that the Major had coolly written to Maestricht 
that her coming and Alfred’s must be postponed a few 
weeks, while a fit shelter was found for the daughter 
of the house. This she knew, and she was filled with 
an unreasoning desire to escape from her mother’s 
reproaches by doing as that lady required of her. In 
any case, she would do all that she could, or rather, 
she would insult herself to the bitter end before her 
mother’s eyes. She was consumed by an insane 
craving to learn how far she could complete her 
degradation, in futile expectation of her mother’s : 
Halt ! It was a hideous daydream, hurrying her on. 
But she was cool and calm, to outward eyes, only 
sternly silent for so bright a creature, refusing to stay 
with the others, and going up into her own small bed- 
chamber, where she would sit and moon alone. 

I do not think she ever realised a denouement. 
She could not have imagined a proposal of marriage 
to or from Joris as an actual possibility. It was a 
picture in her mind, and it interested her. But how 
many pictures have we not in our minds which we 
never expect to walk out of their frames ! They are 
vividly coloured, but they are quite flat. And to walk 
you must have substance and shape. 

She never asked herself what she thought of Joris. 
Yet she must have known that she liked him, and 
that it was with increasing pleasure she greeted his 
step on the stairs and his voice at the door. 

But there never was or had been anything between 
them — either in word or deed — that could be ex- 
plained into a shadow of love-making. Unless you 
care to consider as such the drawing of that coat of 
arms. 


A QUESTIOJSr OF TASTE, 


117 

Ada Romeyn put on her hat and jacket, the sim- 
plest that she had, and she had none which were not 
simple. Then she slipped out of the house without 
saying anything to anybody, and went her way down 
the sunny street. It was the morning of a late day in 
April, when everybody and everything is bright, not 
so much because the sunshine is already there, but 
because we know it is coming. 

For the last week or two Ada had been busy prac- 
tising various recipes for Mayonnaise. She did so 
openly, ostentatiously, where her brother could see 
her, and she managed that he should see her as often 
as possible. She would look down and be engrossed 
by her dish as soon as he entered the room. And if 
he broke, as he rarely did, into a fragmentary ex- 
clamation or interrogation, she would answer nothing, 
or merely yes and no. She enjoyed the idea that he 
should see her thus. “I have begun brewing al- 
ready, you see,’' she said once, triumphantly, in 
answer to his question. She disturbed his cantos. 
He felt very much annoyed with her. 

But the worst of it was that the Mayonnaise would 
not come right. Ada found it harder to make than 
she had considered possible. It would refuse to 
thicken at all, or it would dry up into a paste. And 
if it did not get clotted and lumpy, it was apt to prove 
tasteless. Ada knew little of cooking, and what she 
knew was mostly wrong. She got desperate, and 
she would perhaps have desisted, had it not been for 
the thought that her mother half-dreaded and her 
brother desired that she should leave off. 

And yet, if she wished to succeed, she must re- 
member that time pressed. For she had bound her- 
self down to a fixed day in her thoughts. She had 
been led to do so by a few words that fell from Joris 
as well as by her mother’s frequent reminder that the 


Il8 A QUESTION OF TASTE. 

weeks were speeding by in the direction of Maestricht. 
“ I do hope the man will speak before much longer/' 
the widow grumbled, almost daily. “You do noth- 
ing to attract him, Ada ; you don’t even sing to him 
unless he asks you to. I never saw so indifferent a 
girl. And I warn you that I can’t continue wasting 
bottles on bottles of wine in this manner, not to speak 
of the cakes from the confectioner’s, and the two 
tins of lunch-tongue he’s had when he stayed to 
supper.” 

“I am working away at my Mayonnaise,” said 
Ada, with an imperceptible sneer. 

But Mevrouw Romeyn did not believe in the 
Mayonnaise. She expected a declaration from the 
gentleman. What business could he have otherwise 
to remain to supper and eat lunch-tongue ? 

“ The Major is a worthy woman in many respects,” 
said joris to himself, as he walked briskly home after 
one of these parties, “ if only she would excuse me- 
from drinking her cheap claret and swallowing those 
vile sweeties from the pastry-cook’s. I suppose she 
means kindly. She doesn’t seem to waste over-much 
gentleness on her daughter, all the same.” 

And so Pity, that dangerous cousin of the other 
fellow’s, crept into Joris’s heart, and began shifting 
the furniture. 

But this was what induced Ada to take some defi- 
nite steps about getting her sauce ready. 

Mevrouw Romeyn had suggested, a general con- 
versation having prepared the way, that Joris should 
write his name in Ada’s birthday-book which lay on 
the table. And then she had ‘ ‘ gone to carry Alfred 
his cup of tea,” a fragrant libation to the Muses. 

Joris sat, after he had obeyed orders, with the open 
book in front of him. He was wrapped in thought- 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


I19 

ful contemplation of something which he saw beyond 
its pages. And his thoughts were serious ones, for a 
tender look came into those soft, dark eyes of his 
which had early attracted Ada’s attention in the 
streets, when their owner took off his hat to her, 
because her father had been his friend. 

‘ ‘ Are you thinking that you don’t like your birth- 
day ? ” she asked. ‘ ‘ I don’t. I think it’s a horrible 
day. But, none the less, we must all own to having 
one. And, you see, I eschew the cruelty of those 
monsters in petticoats who coolly request you to add 
the date of your birth.” 

“I was thinking,” he said, simply, “that this is 
the first time I shall keep my birthday alone. My 
mother used to make a great festival of the day, and 
she celebrated it thirty-four times.” 

Ready sympathy sprang into Ada’s eyes. She was 
at a loss how to express it and so she took up the 
book and began fingering its pages. 

“Why, your birthday is coming round in little 
more than a week ! ” she said, suddenly, gazing down 
at his name across the page. 

“Yes; it was that made me think of it,” he 
replied. 

She looked straight into his eyes and held out her 
hand : 

“You must come and keep it here,” she said. 
“We cannot make good what is gone, and we shall 
not try to.” 

It was only next morning that she resolved to get 
her wretched sauce ready for that day. They had 
never spoken again of the wager to each other, since 
that lunch-party at Dommelen, which had called it 
into existence. 

And SO in the course of that morning Ada started 
to hunt up Dientje. 


120 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


For it had been borne in upon her soul that the 
secret of perfection must be locked away in Dientje's 
breast. It was probably lost but it might be recov- 
erable. 

Ada was resolved to try and unearth it. 

She did not stick at insignificant difficulties, her 
troubles were too real for that. And Joris at this 
hour, so much she could rely on, was safely locked 
up in his room at the Ministry of Finance. She rang 
the bell boldly, and smiled when Dientje opened the 
door, as if there were nothing to be surprised at. 

“ You are Mynheer Middlelstum’s servant, are you 
not.'^” she said. “He has told me about you and 
how you look after him since his mother died. 

“ Hum,” said Dientje. She had quite as much mother- 
wit as Ada. She would have liked the word ‘ ‘ how ” 
to be qualified. “ How well,” “ How carefully ” has 
a definitely pleasant meaning. But “how” may 
signify anything. 

As a fact, ‘ ‘ how ” alluded to a highly-coloured list 
of misfortunes, but Ada had considered permissible 
this compromise between her regard for truth and 
her wish to be friendly. 

“I want to talk to you for a moment,” she went 
on, nothing daunted. ‘ ‘ Can I step in ? ” 

Without answering, Dientje retreated to the front 
room door and threw it open. But she never took 
her mistrustful eyes off the visitor s hands. 

“Oh, no,” cried Ada, shrinking back in a sudden 
flush of some unreasoned delicacy. She could not 
bear the idea of thus intruding upon his room in his 
absence. “I would rather go a moment into your 
kitchen, if you please.” 

But Dientje had her own reasons for keeping her 
kitchen door closed. “It’s no use your coming to 
ask me to leave him,” she burst out, “so you 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. m 

needn’t stay. For I never shall abandon Mynheer 
Joris.” 

“ I do not wish you to do so,” began Ada, sitting 
down on a hall chair. 

“No, indeed, Juffrouw, nor it wouldn’t be no use 
to you. I promised his mother to remain faithful to 
him, and faithful I shall ever remain. ‘ Ah, Mynheer 
Joris,’ I said to him only yesterday, ‘the world may 
speak evil of both of us, but your Dientje will be true 
to you still.’ And he wrung my hand, he did, Mejuf- 
frouw, whoever you may be, and ‘Dientje,’ says he, 
‘ we’ll stick to each other. ’ So you see it’s no use 
coming to offer me another place, for I won’t take 
it.” 

“ How very strange ! ” thought Ada. Dientje had 
a magnificent imagination, untrammelled by realities, 
but Ada did not know that. The historical basis of 
the latter half of the above recital must be reduced to 
the fact that the laundress had complained yesterday 
evening of Dientje’s tendency to letting her master’s 
shirts get singed when she aired them, whereupon 
Joris had vainly taken his handmaid to task. As for 
the promise to his mother, it was a dream which had 
become solidified in Dientje’s brain. 

“And did his mother really entrust his welfare to 
your care ” demanded Ada, bending forward on her 
stiff oaken seat with much interest and a little uncer- 
tainty. 

“Ah, Mejuffrouw, I remember it as if it were yes- 
terday. She was sitting by my side in the kitchen 
a week before she died. And she was making a 
cabinet-pudding, which she was always most partic- 
ular about the stoning of the raisins. And I says, ‘ if 
it’s my opinion you’re asking, that it’s cleaner work 
to leave the raisins unstoned.’ ‘But Dientje,’ she 
says, ‘ if ever I was to snuffle this martial coil, you 


122 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


must see that my Joris gets his puddings stoned. 
And, oh, Dientje, don’t underdo the greens ! ’ And 
then she turned the corner. Leastways, she did a 
few days later. And the words have sounded in my 
ears ever since, and it’s what we must all come to, 
as the Domine says every Sunday. And so I do my 
duty to Mynheer Joris, and I never ask for thanks.” 

Dientje did not speak bad English, but she spoke 
equivalent Dutch. 

“Yet Mynheer Middelstum does not dine at home,” 
said Ada. 

Dientje put her apron up to her eyes. But she 
quickly put it down again and glared, with a sudden 
forward thrust of her fat face, at her visitor. 

“ Does he dine with you ? ” she asked, fiercely. 

“No, no,” retorted Ada, colouring with annoyance. 
“ I am Miss Romeyn, you remember. I came with 
my mother to see your master’s collections. He 
must surely sometimes have spoken of me to you 
before and since. ” 

“Oh, yes, he has certainly spoken,” said Dientje, 
with a great air of importance. That is to say, Joris 
had once or twice mentioned that he was gt)ing to 
the Zuiderstraat. For he was even more taciturn 
than most men with female servants, and might 
almost have been accused of keeping Dientje on too 
short commons — conversationally — for a maid-of-all- 
work. 

“ And what did he say ? ” asked Ada — but as she 
spoke the words, she recoiled from their meaning 
and quickly added : “Or rather, he has supped with 
us once or twice, and in fact, it was about this matter 
I came. I suppose you know his birthday is a few 
days hence ? ” 

“I should think so,” said Dientje, with withering 
emphasis. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


123 

“Of course. Well, he is going to — Can you keep a 
secret, Juffrouw — ^Juffrouw ?” 

“Betje,” said the owner of that not uncommon 
name. She thought to herself that Mynheer's intimate 
friends might have known it without needing to ask 
her. 

“Just so, Juffrouw Betje — can you ? ” 

“If it’s in Mynheer’s interest,” said Betje, “with 
my heart’s blood.” 

“ Keep it till after his birthday, and you shall have 
four others like this,” said Ada, and she held out a 
silver florin. 

“I never do anything for money,” replied the 
faithful domestic, as she took the coin. 

“It is this,” said Ada, “I am anxious to prepare a 
surprise for him on his birthday, which is unavoid- 
ably destined to be a melancholy day for him now ” 
— Betje nodded, as if she wanted to nod her head off 
— “And you, of course, know all his mother’s little 
ways from having lived with her. Now I daresay 
you helped her with all the little dishes she used to 
make?” 

“Yes, I used to help her to make them,” said 
Betje, “except when I made them without her.” 

And then Ada explained her plan to the good 
woman and earnestly requested her assistance in the 
unravelling of the mystery of the Mayonnoise. Betje 
knew the recipe, for Betje had made it ? Betje nodded 
again. And so the two conspirators retired to the 
untidy kitchen, and there was great breaking of eggs 
and mixing and cackling— the latter by featherless 
fowls. And at last, after long labour, Ada Romeyn 
emerged smiling, as she tripped away into the sun- 
shine down the wind-smitten street. 

And Betje stood on the doorstep and watched her 
out of sight. Betje was smiling also, with that calm, 


124 


A QUESTION’ OF TASTE, 


supercilious smile of those who do their duty and 
love to do it. She smiled down upon her second 
florin, which still rested in her palm, and she smiled 
at Ada’s fast retreating figure, and thus gently, sweetly 
smiling she sank back into the passage and let the 
door fall to. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


125 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE BIRTHDAY GREETING. 

The morning of Joris’s birthday broke in floods of 
fresh young sunshine. It was an early May morn- 
ing, and you might have thought the sparkle in the 
sky was still a reminiscence of the showers that had 
cleared it over night. Over all creation hung the 
consciousness of an awakening, a mighty, though as 
yet scarcely definite yearning to arise and be at work. 
And still, like the slothful sleeper, at any moment it 
might sink back again in short breaks of returning 
lethargy, when the stern east wind came wandering 
by and softly snowed up the white coverlet across its 
bed again. 

“No snow in May,” says the optimist. So.be it. 
Let us try to believe it. May is the poet’s month, the 
month of birds in the trees and lovers under them. 
No snow in May. Only wind and rain. Oh, my 
country, my country, how sweet beyond all other 
lands wouldst thou be to inhabit — if only thou wert 
habitable. 

God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. He does 
more. In Holland he tempers the climate to the 
birds. And you can hear them singing so sweetly, so 
sweetly, as if they hadn’t all got colds in their heads. 

And yet they have. They must have. No brain 
on earth, however protected by a feathery night-cap, 
can stand being exposed to the fall of that sunset dew. 
But their throats endure it. And for that also let us 
be humbly thankful. 


126 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


Now Italy, for instance, has a beautiful climate, 
but it is a silent land. They eat their nightingales 
there, I believe. 

There was no snow on Joris Middelstum’s window- 
sill, when he looked out on his birthday morning. 
He had not expected there would be, and therefore 
was not grateful for its stopping away. But neither 
was he grateful for the sunshine and the radiance and 
all the twittering of the birds among the bursting 
branches. It was his birthday, and he had made up 
his mind to feel miserable. He would have done so, 
probably, without the resolve, but he did it all the 
more, now he knew it to be both his duty and his 
pleasure. 

Yes, he felt very miserable. He spent his time, 
while dressing, thinking of his various former birth- 
days, and recalling a thousand little tokens of his 
mother's love, which had shone out more clearly, 
perhaps, on these anniversaries, as you may see the 
lantarus sinking down the street with a larger light at 
intervals before some festive door. He lingered af- 
fectionately over last year's quiet feast, and his glances 
wandered to the last thing she had worked for him, a 
screen by which to read at night ! During many 
years she had begged him to give up this evil habit, 
and she had ended by working him this screen ! How 
she spoiled him ! He had to leave off shaving for a 
moment, till he could once more distinguish his feat- 
ures clearly in the glass. And the thought of this 
childish weakness made him savage with himself, and 
yet more miserable. Birthdays were infamous in- 
stitutions. At least, bachelor's birthdays were. Then 
he pulled out a white hair. He went downstairs in 
an abominable temper. 

On the stairs he remembered how the old lady had 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


127 

persisted all her life in sticking to the good, but fool- 
ish, custom of preparing a Putziisch for her son, long 
after he had outgrown the age for it— a table covered 
with a fair white cloth and decked with a border of 
leaves and flowers and children's goodies, on which 
her presents to him were spread out. He had always 
had to “swallow ” that table (not the sweets), and 
now he reproached himself for not having invariably 
appreciated its beauties. And yet, in the middle of 
his miserableness, he felt a certain stillness of con- 
tent that the table, at any rate, would no longer be 
there. 

He opened the door of the dining-room, and the 
first object that niet his gaze was the “ Putztisch." 

There it stood in all its pristine glory. The spot- 
less cloth hung bright and dainty as it had ever hung 
in former years. A border of ivy-leaves was arranged 
around it with more or less accuracy — one or two of 
them had curled up and fallen to the floor, leaving a 
gap. And a great gaunt green plant, a ficus, sent 
forth its shining shoots from the middle of the table, 
while a gorgeous collection of hyacinths and tulips 
lay loose among a scattered three pennyworth of 
sweets. The room was heavy with the sickening 
oppression of the flowers. 

At first Joris stood wildly staring, like a man in a 
maze, and then he stamped his feet and tore his hair, 
and rampaged about the room, and said a lot of 
naughty things. 

He thought at first that it must be a kindly atten- 
tion from soMie old friend of his mother’s — but who 
could it be of the few ? — and then he burst out again 
at the idea that it must be some masculine monster’s 
practical joke. 

“ It’s a beastly, brutal practical joke,” he gasped. 
And then he said more naughty things. 


128 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


He sank into an apathetic condition of stolid an- 
noyance as he lay in his chair and leered at the 
wretched object, and the object smiled back at him 
with a smirk of smooth linen and blooming tulips 
which was certainly more than thirty-five-year old 
flesh could be expected to endure. 

“ It’s a callous, cowardly practical joke,” he hissed. 

^‘Breakfast.? I don’t want an)" breakfast.” And 
then he rang for Dientje to bring it in. 

He looked round as she kicked open the door from 
outside, preparatory to making her majestic entry. 
For that was her way of sailing in with the “ things.” 
And as his eyes met hers, he saw upon her face the 
same complaisant smirk which rested over that atro- 
cious “Putztisch,” and he understood that Dientje s 
soul and the Putztisch were one. 

And every nerve in his long nervous body sat up 
and pinched him. 

His whole soul felt black and blue. 

But he was too seriously disgusted to be as miser- 
able as when he came downstairs. 

“And that much happiness maybe yours,” said 
Dientje, “and many blessings. I wish you an end of 
your loneliness. Mynheer, and may this year bring 
you the cheerful home you stand in need of. Ah, it 
wasn’t like this when the old Mevrou w still lived. ” 

She cast her eyes up, and across the decorated 
table. 

She wanted him to say that it was. But he didn’t. 
He didn’t say anything. So she sighed, and poked a 
fat red finger into one of her saucer-eyes. 

“Ah, well,” she continued, “we can’t all have 
what we want in this world. And I shall continue to 
do my duty by you. Mynheer, in the future as in the 
past. No, you needn’t be afraid of my neglecting my 
duty. You will acknowledge, I hope, that I have 


A QUESTION- OF TASTE. 


129 

done my best in the past." Sottovoce : “ I should 
think so, indeed." 

She was furious with him. “ Is he never going to 
speak up and say something pretty .? " she thought. 

He sat gazing at her, like a dumb creature in pain. 
“Yes, yes," he murmured, at last, “thank you, my 
dear soul. " He pointed to the tall ficus. ‘ ‘ Thank 
you," he repeated. He could not, for the life of him 
be more explicit. He motioned her gently to the door. 
But Dientje stood her ground. She had an object in 
view. She had had it all along, when she went out 
to get the sweets, and when she haggled for the ficus 
and got it ten cents cheaper. 

‘ ‘ Are you going to dine out to-day, Mynheer, did I 
understand you to say last night } " she began, in a 
wheedling tone. ‘ ‘ Are you going to spend this even- 
ing with strangers } " 

“ Yes," he replied, moodily, looking up in surprise. 
“ Whom else should I spend it with } " 

“Fie, Mynheer," said Dientje, bridling with righteous 
indignation. “There’s your own home, surely, to 
spend it in ; and a restaurant such as you now prefer 
to go to would be almost better and certainly more 
harmless than many a house that’s little else than a 
mouse trap." 

‘ ‘ My home ! " he began, bitterly, but he checked 
himself. No, noae of that kind of thing to the servant. 

None the less Dientje caught him up. “Yes, your 
home,” she said hotly. “ Your old home, and the old 
times, and — oh, dear me — the Missus ! Oh, when I 
think of the old times. Mynheer ! And why — oh why 
— will you desert it? You don’t tell me the restau- 
rant-dinners are as good as you say they are. Nor you 
don’t think it. Now come back to the old home, my 
dear good Mynheer, and I’ll cook for you as I never 
did before ? " 


9 


130 


A (QUESTION OF TASTE, 


am going to dine with Mevrouw Romeyn this 
evening, Dientje,” said Joris, looking down in his cup, 
as he poured out his tea. 

"‘Ah, then go, sir,” cried Dientje, her voice rising to 
tragedy tones. Joris quaked. “But don’t say I 
haven’t warned you against snakes in the grass. And 
when they have caught you in their nets, don’t say I 
neglected to defend you against their treacherous grins. 
Mynheer ! ” 

Even now Joris did not take up arms. He lay 
stunned under that mountain of metaphor. 

“Weak fool !” thought Alfred, when he heard the 
story from Joris himself. But Alfred was unable to 
judge, for the Major did all the scolding that family 
required. Nor can Mevrouw van Puntjes judge, who 
has just worried her little maid-of-all- work’s brains into 
pulp. No woman can judge, nor can any woman- 
protected man. 

And therefore I dedicate this book to all my fellow 
bachelors. 

You try — you of the masculine gender — to do battle 
with a female domestic who is helmeted by absence 
of the elements of common sense and visored by a 
perpetual smile. You try it, and tell the world how 
you managed. At least, if you think and act like a 
gentleman. It’s easy enough, if you don’t. 

“ Ah, Mynheer,” said Dientje, holding her head on 
one side, and bending gently forward with soft and 
slanting eyes, “Ah, Mynheer, you might be so happy 
and so comfortable, if only you didn’t seek happiness 
and comfort so far ! ” 

He looked up quickly. Something in the tone of 
her voice struck him and drew his hesitating glances 
up. And as they fell on Dientje’s pleading pose and 
on the soft compassion of her eyes, he started up 
abruptly, upsetting the tea-stove, and ran away up 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


the street and across the square, far faster than an 
official of his position ought to run, and ran on 
towards the Ministry of Finance and up into his sanc- 
tum, and there sank into his chair and gasped for 
breath. 

Dientjedid not immediately bestow her attention on 
the steaming pool of water which lay soaking into the 
carpet. She gathered all the brilliant hyacinths and 
tulips in her apron and threw them out of the window, 
in a mess all over the pavement. And she inwardly 
resolved to return the ficus to the salesman if she 
could. 

And then she ate the sweets. 


132 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


CHAPTER XV. 

SIMPLIFIES MATTERS FOR EVERYONE. 

It was Joris Middelstum’s birthday. Alfred had said : 

‘ ‘ I congratulate you ! ’’ fiercely to Ada at breakfast, 
and Ada had smiled back, also fiercely, and had 
quickly replied: “We shall see ! She did not say 
what. She said very little, as was her wont of late. 
But she smiled to herself at times — triumphant, self- 
confident little smiles. 

“The deuce, she’ll do it ! ” murmured Alfred. He 
would gladly have boxed his sister’s ears. But he 
couldn’t do that, so he sent Sibylla a basket of violets 
instead. 

“ I shall speak to her,” he told himself every now 
and then. But he shrank from too explicit explana- 
tions. And on Joris’s birthday he could not have 
spoken, if he would, for Ada locked herself up in the 
kitchen all day, where she could be seen from the 
garden, hard at work, with flushed cheeks and spark- 
ling eyes. 

Thence she emerged when the afternoon was al- 
ready waning. For the servant had told her repeat- 
edly that Anton Trommels refused to go away, until she 
had seen him. He had come on purpose ; he had 
something of importance to say, and he was going to 
say it. 

‘ ‘ Is mamma not at home ? ” asked Ada, pettishly. 

No, Mevrouw had gone out at the last moment, to 
get some missing trifles for the dessert. 


A QUESTION- OF TASTE. 


33 


Ada frowned and beat an impatient tattoo with her 
foot. She felt sure he was come to ask her to marry 
him. Well, and why should she not hear his pro- 
posal ? Her sauce was ready, to begin with. And 
why should she not accept him if she chose ? Because 
her mother had told her, once for all, that she would 
never give her consent to the match, and because, 
without her mother’s consent, all thought of an en- 
gagement must remain simply impossible. That, 
surely, was reason enough. But, supposing this 
reason had not thrust itself forward, what other would 
she have assigned ? She had herself proposed the 
marriage to her mother once upon a time, not so very 
long ago. Why should she think differently now ? 
Joris— . 

She did not care for Joris. 

“Ada,” said Anton, “I have a great deal to say, 
but I shan’t be long saying it. You must bear with 
me for a moment ; will you not ? ” 

He was horribly nervous. His fair hair seemed to 
stand alarmingly straight, considering how close- 
cropped it was. And his sunburnt face looked as if 
the owner were having a hard time of it in his efforts 
to keep it composed. But he was stalwart and manly 
in his trim uniform, and Ada admitted that the trepi- 
dation did not sit badly on so fine a soldier in the 
presence of so fair a foe. 

‘ ‘ I want you to answer me one question ? ” said 
Anton, looking straight at her, with half-frightened 
eyes. “ Is this story true that Alfred tells me, about 
your wager with Mynheer Middelstum and the prize 
which you intend to claim when you win it ? ” 

“Did Alfred tell you.?” Ada blazed out at him. 
“Oh, the coward! But I shall not answer im- 
pertinent questions, Anton, so you can save yourself 
the trouble of putting them.” 


134 A QUESTION OF TASTE, 

“ You need not be so angry, Ada,’’ said the young 
soldier, gently. “Of course, I don’t believe Alfred’s 
story, as he told it, and so I informed him. But there 
may be a quintessence of truth in it ; namely, your 
resolve to marry this Mynheer Middelstum. A woman 
can ask a man to marry her, I suppose, by making 
him ask her.” 

“Oh, a woman is always responsible for every- 
thing,” retorted Ada, pettishly, “and at the bottom 
of all the trouble. I know that. ” 

“No, no,” replied her cousin, still gently. “Of 
course I know all about your difficulties, at least 
about some of them. And about your — your life at 
home. And that’s why I came here this afternoon. 
I think I understand, Ada, even though you don’t 
want me to. Aren’t we cousins ? And haven’t we 
always played together .? ” 

“ Yes ! ” cried Ada, the tension of her high-strung 
nerves giving way with a snap. “And you’ve always 
made love to me in this manner, and never meant 
anything by it. And I don’t see that it gives you a 
right to be always poking your nose into my affairs.” 

“I came here this afternoon,” said Anton, suddenly 
quite calm and firm, “to ask you to be my wife. I 
have always loved you, and I believe you have known 
it more or less. Will you marry me .? ” 

“No,” said Ada, quickly. “I am much obliged to 
you, Anton, and it is very generous of you if you 
really mean it. But I think you hardly can. And, 
besides, you know very well that, even if we wanted 
to, my mother would never allow it.” 

She was deeply hurt, for she still refused to believe 
in Anton’s sincerity. She fancied that he considered 
himself in duty bound to give her the chance of refus- 
ing him, knowing beforehand that the refusal must 
be sure, as a marriage was impossible. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


135 

“I am not so certain of your mother’s opposition,” 
said Anton, '‘in spite of all that she has said to that 
effect” He hesitated for a moment, evidently strug- 
gling with himself. And then he said quietly, as he 
stood looking down at, and fingering, the tassel of 
his sword : 

“I know you will never take me for myself. I 
must give up that idea. And I ought to have seen 
that it was a forlorn hope from the first. Look here, 
Ada, I may as well tell you. I’m no longer as poor 
as I used to be — not as poor as you think me. You 
needn’t stare at me as if I were talking nonsense. 
I’m not. You remember my mother’s eldest brother 
that went to America, and how we used to joke about 
the idea of the American fortune that would come 
falling into my lap some day. Well, it has come, it 
came a few weeks ago. That is to say, it hasn’t come 
over literally, but it’s there, and it’s waiting for me to 
go and fetch it. My uncle is dead, and he has left 
his money to me. He has left me a hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars, because, as he says in his will, 
I am the child of the only creature on earth who ever 
loved him. Isn't that sad? It is very, very sad, 
Ada, to have no one on earth to care for you, is it 
not?” 

Ada did not answer. This was only so much more 
pity for her forlorn condition. She resented it. And 
the news she had just now heard surprised and an- 
noyed her. Why this secrecy between people who 
had been together as brother and sister ? 

It was as if Anton read her thoughts. “I didn’t 
tell you immediately,” he continued, humbly, “be- 
cause I had already made up my mind to — to speak to 
you soon, before the lawyer’s letter came. And so I 
persuaded my father to wait a month or so. I had 
hoped, Ada — it was a stupid fancy — that you would 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


136 

take me for myself alone. I suppose you will say it 
was very conceited of me. I daresay that’s true.” 

He stopped speaking, and still he looked down at 
the silver tassel, and played with it. 

“And now you come and ask me to take you for 
your money ? ” said Ada. 

“ Hardly that,” replied the young officer. “With 
my money. We shall now obtain your mother’s con- 
sent.” 

“Thank you,” said Ada. “Once more, you are 
very good. It is very kind of you, Anton, to come 
and tell me you are rich. It is ” Her voice fal- 

tered, and suddenly her tone changed altogether, as a 
brook might come bubbling over a weir. “You are 
a fine, noble fellow, Anton, and I have wronged you 
all along, and am wronging you still. It is noble of 
you, and grand, to come and make me this proposal, 
but it can’t be.” 

She held out both her hands to her cousin in an 
impulse of shame-struck penitence, but he did not 
take them, nor did he lift his eyes from his sword. 

‘ ‘ Why can’t it ? ” he protested. ‘ ‘ Surely your posi- 
tion here at home is not such a pleasant one. Have 
you not shown how eager you are to escape from it ? 
I make you no reproaches. As I said, I know some- 
thing of the furies that are driving you on. Well, I 
come and offer you the deliverance you are seeking. 
Why not accept it ? ” 

“I understand you,” said Ada, as calmly as she 
could. “I tell you I understand you, Anton. Better, 
perhaps, than you understand yourself. And I thank 
you, from the bottom of my heart. ” 

“ I ask no thanks,” he broke in, a little impatiently 
for the first time. “Give me reasons. Plain com- 
mon sense.” 

“Why not ?” she said, slowly. “It is better. And 


A QUJiSTlON- OF TASTE. 


137 

you have deserved of me that I should be fair with 
you. I do not think we love each other, Anton, as a 
future man and wife should love. Oh, don't think I 
doubt of your affection ; haven’t you just given me 
the noblest proof of it .? But we love each other so 
well as brother and sister that it is difficult to know 
what is — what is the other thing.’' 

“You mean that you don’t love me, ‘excepting as 
a sister,'” said Anton, bitterly. “I have heard the 
phrase quoted before.” 

“Yes, I mean that, only here the sisterly affection 
is so deep and sincere, that it becomes, a,s I said, hard 
to distinguish. And, Anton, dear Anton, forgive me 
when I say that I think you are confusing the two. 
You are so generous, and so chivalrous, and you love 
your sister so truly, that you would do anything for 
her sake. But some day you will find that the closest 
bond of fraternal love — is— not the other. ” 

Her face was scarlet. She spoke with great anima- 
tion, and yet with gentle fervour. 

“I know what all that means,” said Anton, sullenly. 

“It means ” He was going to say “that you are 

in love with Joris Middelstum.” He did not say it. 
He gnawed his lips where he fancied a moustache 
was, and kept silence, like the true-hearted soldier 
that he was. 

“It means,” said Ada, “ that we must remain, as 
we have ever been, the fondest of cousins. But I 
don't want to shift any of my responsibility off my 
shoulders. I tell you frankly that I do not think I 
could be more. And if I add that I believe that you 
also, Anton, are' mistaking your generous heart, it is 
because — because — in my inmost soul I believe it’s 
true, and oh, Anton, I am so sorry. ” 

She had come nearer to him. And now she sud- 
denly threw her arm round her cousin’s neck and 


138 A QUESTION OF TASTE. 

kissed him, like an impulsive, unmaidenly little crea- 
ture that she was. 

“And I thank you again,'' she said, vehemently. 
“Yes, whether you accept the thanks or not, I thank 
you a hundred thousand times. No, I thank you 
once, once and forever. I shall be grateful to you, 
and shall love you all my life." 

And when he had gone from her — in silent anger, 
almost more than in sorrow, proving by his demean- 
our, perhaps, that there was truth in her words — 
when he had gone from her, she crept up to her room 
to dress for dinner. And she thought much of Anton. 
And yet more of Joris Middelstum. 

She hardly dared to avow to herself the discovery 
which had just flickered forth upon her soul. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


139 


CHAPTER XVI. 

THE MAJOR STARTS THE POOR FOX. 

By the time he had put in his promised appearance 
at Mevrouw Romeyn’s, Joris had somewhat — but 
only somewhat — recovered his equanimity. He had 
cause enough for annoyance. In the first place, he 
felt that he must part with Dientje and the thought 
was enough to bring on the ague. For, what reason 
could he assign ? He felt that, if need be, there was 
yet manhood enough left in him to get as far as : 
‘‘You must go, because” — on condition that he could 
immediately add : “you get drunk,” or “ you steal,” 
or some similar enormity. But to say these words 
and then pause, and, in answer to a stare of indig- 
nant amazement to stammer out something about : 
“you are too kind” or “you take too good care of 
me ” — he would rather stop away altogether and sleep 
in the streets. 

Life with her was terrible, if she remained. But if 
she went, what would life be then? At least she 
knew his ways and those of the house. She was the 
last link between him and the old existence. She 
had lived with his mother, had seen that perfect 
housewife at work in her “menage.” And what 
should he do with a new servant — supposing he could 
get one ? 

And Joris fell a-thinking of his mother, and the 
cheerful evenings by the sitting-room fire. This had 
been a terribly dull and lonely winter. He had got 
into a habit of going frequently to the theatre, far 


140 A QUESTION- OF TASTE. 

more frequently than he liked. In fact, when he 
came to think of it, he hated the theatre — the glare 
and the stuffiness, and all the bother of going and 
coming back. He would never enter one again. 

And his scientific collections had suffered of late. 
There was no one to keep them in order. True, 
Dientje had p resisted in dusting the cases, till he suc- 
ceeded in locking , them away. But it was not that 
which had caused all the damage. He himself had 
not looked after them as he ought to. And he did 
not care to sit sorting them and arranging them by 
himself, with nobody to pour out a cup of tea. He 
had never been able to reproduce exactly his mother’s 
mixture. She had taken the secret into the grave 
with her. 

Yet it was no use always yearning for the unattain- 
able, he felt. That is to say, it was no use wasting 
the present in vain longings to reproduce the past. 
He might as well make the best of it, and pick up 
such shreds of happiness as were left him. He was 
an old fellow of thirty-five, — he cast anxious glances 
at the looking-glass behind him, as he remembered 
the morning’s white hair — and he mustn’-t pretend to 
be still young and charming. He had delayed too 
long among the comforts of his easy mamma-sheltered 
bachelorhood. And in spite of his veneration for the 
old lady’s memory, the feeling of injury again asserted 
itself, that she should have kept him so entirely to 
herself, and then left him alone in the solitude she 
had created for both. This feeling had come more 
and more forward of late. And he could not help, 
much as he struggled against the ingratitude, holding 
his dear saint responsible for many of his present 
trials. The privations of to-day imposed themselves 
upon his consciousness, none the less because they 
stood out black against the warm light of the past, 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


14I 

Decidedly, his mother had been mistaken. A man 
should marry when he was young. 

Ah, supposing he had been young still ! There 
might have been opportunity enough for reconstruct- 
ing that ruined home and restoring to a semblance of 
their former perfection the quiet joys of an “ egoisme 
a deux.” After all, eating and drinking were things 
of minor importance — of importance undoubtedly, 
but it was only when better and loftier desires were 
thrust down into the background, that they loomed 
forward in unnatural proportions. He could imagine, 
even though he had never touched it, a happiness 
which rested on a pure, and lasting basis, unshaken 
by whiffs of sensual whim, a happiness which sur- 
vived even a bad dinner or a button off a shirt. 

He shook himself together. “Nonsense,” he said. 
“Decidedly I am growing old. What is it the old 
people die of.?^ Softening of the — no not heart — 
brain. And what would such a bright young crea- 
ture, full of life and hope, say to a middle-aged fogy 
like me .? I must mafry a respectable old maid, who 
will make me a permanent housekeeper. I might as 
well send in an advertisement as not. ” 

He was still ruminating these things when he 
reached the Zuiderstraat. The thoughts were not 
cheerful ones. For no man, however young or old 
he may be, likes quarrelling with his age. There is 
something so hopeless about it. 

“ Decidedly, ” he repeated, “no young girl would 
have me. It would be an insult to ask her to bind 
her fresh young life to mine. And no man of honour 
would do it.” 

Mevrouw Romeyn received him in the festively- 
lighted parlour. She was attired in her violet silk 
dress and big cameo of the great Napoleon. Joris 
knew that violet robe. And, indeed, for the last 


142 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


thirteen years the Major had possessed no other 
dinner dress. For it must be admitted to her honour 
that she was not one of those mercenary mothers 
who spend what little money there is on themselves. 
She saved and scraped, because saving and scraping 
were unavoidable, but her children, Ada as well as 
Alfred, got more than their share of the few good 
things going. But she was thoroughly weary and 
sick of trying to find more than a hundred cents in a 
florin. And so she wanted to end the search ; the 
sooner the better. 

She was angry with her daughter for not showing 
more spirit. Of her plans she knew nothing, except 
that the Mayonnaise was to be got ready, and the 
wager to be won. But the how, why, and wherefore 
Ada kept to herself. Not for one moment did Mev- 
rouw expect the girl to carry her threat into execu- 
tion. But she believed, with Anton, that a woman 
asks a man by making him propose to her. She was 
in ignorance as yet of what had passed between the 
cousins, and Ada trembled to think what her mother 
would say when she heard that her daughter had 
refused a fortune. 

“The child has no more idea how to manage 
these matters than a babe unborn,'’ said the Major to 
herself. “ If I had been as shilly-shally and dilly- 
dally as she is, I should never have brought poor 
Romeyn to the point." And by this confession she 
convicted herself of inaccuracy, for how accept it as 
in harmony with her repeated declaration that she 
had taken pity on her suitor for the sake of the 
regiment ? 

“I must help her a little," she thought, and she 
nodded to her great fat face in the glass, as she stood 
arranging her white lace cap with its imposing violet 
bows and nodding sparkles of bead-work, 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


M3 

**Ah, Mynheer Middelstum/’ she said. ‘‘I am 
glad you have come. This must be a melancholy 
day for you under the circumstances.” 

She extended a heavy claw as if she would indeed 
curl it round him and suck him in. The fly sat down 
abruptly, and rubbed his hands thoughtfully over 
each other, as flies are wont to do. 

He had hoped, with a futile longing, that no one 
would allude to his loss. 

Mevrouw Romeyn looked at the matter differently, 
and she talked of nothing else : ‘ ‘ Ah, yes, it is very 
sad,” she repeated, rattling her sparkles, “very sad 
indeed. But you mustn’t mind too much. Of course 
you would feel it more on a day like this. I always 
miss my poor Romeyn on his birthday. It’s a day 
on which you naturally remember the dead people. 
But you mustn’t remember them too much, as a rule. 
It does nobody any good, neither you nor them, for 
it makes you maudlin and it doesn’t bring them back 
again.” 

“ I never looked at it exactly in that light,” said 
Joris quietly, with his eyes upon the door. 

“ No, perhaps not. It often just wants somebody 
to give you the idea, and there you are. You see it 
at once. And that’s the advantage of us old women, 
Mynheer Middelstum, and why so many of the 
world’s wisest men prefer an old woman to a young 
one. We have experience, you see. At least, so my 
aunt used to say, and she was a very sensible 
woman, except in that affair about the family papers. 
Did I ever tell you about the family papers .? ” 

“Oh, do tell me ! ” said Joris, fiercely, with a smile 
upon his face. 

And she did. And then she told him about Na- 
poleon and her father, old Blazes Trommels and she 
showed him the cameo, He admired the cameo, 


144 ^ QUESTION OF TASTE. 

and he said the story of old Blazes’s Legion of Honour 
was “good.” 

“ But, oh dear, the past ! ” said the Major. “ The 
past is dead and gone, and it’s no use trying to re- 
call it. We should live in the present. Yes, de- 
cidedly, we should live in the present, but not alone. 
It’s not good for man to be alone. Mynheer Mid- 
delstum. ” 

“ No,” acquiesced Joris, meekly, “it isn’t.” 

“ Then don’t. Mynheer Middelstum.” 

“ Don’t what, Mevrouw ? ” 

“ Ah, you are a sly man. Well, keep your own 
counsel. But if I were you, I should take a wife. ” 

“ Shall I build up the fire .? ” asked poor Joris. She 
had hit him hard. “She thinks I am paying too 
marked attention to her daughter,” he said to himself, 
“ and she takes this opportunity of warning me off. 
For she would never speak in that manner unless she 
wished me to understand that she scouted all idea of 
my proposing to Ada. She is right ; the young 
beauty is not for such as me.” “ It is warm, but the 
evenings are still cold,” he said, aloud. And he 
steered the fretting and smiling Major through a few 
more remarks about the weather, till Ada came in. 

She had attired herself in the prettiest clothes that 
she possessed, and looked her nicest. She wore a 
dress of palest blue nun’s veiling made up with a little 
brocade of darker blue and silver : a vest, and what 
the experts call a ‘ ‘ devant ” and bands about the 
wrists. Her fair hair was unadorned, except by its 
own bright play beneath the lamplight ; there was a 
flush on her cheeks and a flash in her eyes, which 
Joris had never seen there before. What did it be- 
speak } he asked himself. Anxiety ? Triumph ? Re- 
solve ? Surely neither of these three. There was no 
cause for them. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


145 

Perhaps she had a sick headache. Ah, prosaic 
Joris, perhaps a little of all three. 

“You are well, I hope ? ” he began, as he pushed 
a chair forward. 

“ Oh, yes,"' she replied (which reply was a fib, for 
the headache was really there. Not a migraine, but 
an ordinary nervous thumper), “and I wish you 
many happy returns of the day, Mynheer Middelstum. 
And, as I know you are so fond of a good dinner, I 
wish you that you may never again on future occa- 
sions get so simple a one as you will have here to- 
night.'^ 

‘ ‘ Another ^ hands off], ' ” thought Joris. * ‘ They have 
evidently been talking it over together, but they might 
have spared me these direct blows of the hammer. I 
cannot imagine how I gave rise to them. I thought 
I had always been exceedingly circumspect.” 

But he took up the gauntlet, and gave back as good 
as he got. For he launched into a defence of his 
weakness for dainty cooking, and he proclaimed his 
favourite theories with the more uncompromising 
energy, because of the doubts as to their lasting value 
which had recently been assailing his mind. So the 
evening began with a disquisition on the merits, both 
moral and hygienic, of good cookery. “ He loveth 
most who liveth best ! ” cried Joris. “ Ah, trust me, 
my dear Juffrouw, there would be far less crime in the 
world if there were less underdone or overdone food. 
You never heard of a man who had dined well com- 
mitting a murder. Oh, in this age of schools for 
everybody and everything, to think that there should 
not even be a state-examination for the responsible 
office of cook in a family ! It is culpable, culpable 
neglect, on the part of the government, of the most 
precious temporal possession of its subjects, the 
stomach. What tests are not required for a doctor, 
10 


146 ^ QUESTION OF TASTE. 

or an apothecary, while a cook — ! What do I say, 
even a carpenter or plumber is apprenticed to his 
trade and must learn it, but any idiot that’s incapa- 
citated by general clumsiness from earning a living, 
throws herself into the newspapers as a first-class 
cook. And she gets a place. That’s where the crime 
of the government comes in. The graduated doctor 
may very probably starve, but I’ll wager you any- 
thing the cook gets a place. ” 

Never mind wagers,” said Ada, quietly. She 
listened with an amused, self-confident smile. And 
Joris talked on, and told these ladies who had just 
rapped him on the fingers of the immeasurable 
advantages of bachelorhood. He omitted the details 
of the birthday-luncheon to which he had treated 
himself in the first restaurant of the town, and which 
had proved an expensive failure because the Villeroy 
cutlets had tasted of the pan. But you cannot tell 
everything. As it was, he had not exhausted his 
subject — in his own estimation — when they were 
called into the dining-room, where they found Alfred, 
who had delayed his appearance as long as he could. 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


147 


CHAPTER XVII. 

BUT IS NOT IN AT THE DEATH. 

The dinner would not have been a very gay affair, 
had Joris not kept up a flood of small talk. He was 
in one of those moods of secret vexation when a man 
either sinks into silence or bubbles over into an 
inordinate stream of shallow badinage. So he talked 
on, and his companions listened, or thought their 
own thoughts, which is always a pleasant form of 
conversation. Mevrouw was dissatisfied with him 
for having broken away from her matrimonial guid- 
ance at the critical moment, Ada was preoccupied, 
Alfred sullen. Alfred was very sullen. He showed 
it. Geniuses show all their moods, but there is none 
they show so plainly as this one. 

Presently, however, he looked up from his plate 
and across at the guest. “ Middelstum,” he said, 
abruptly, “ my cousin Trommels tells me the damage 
done to the crockery at the Exhibition amounted to 
one hundred and thirty-seven florins. He says you 
paid the hundred florins and left the thirty-seven to 
me. I presume he is mistaken .? 

Joris coloured with annoyance. Your cousin 
surely had nothing to do with the matter,” he said. 

He was' not with me in the office, and how could 
he know what was said ? It is an old business, and 
we may as well let it rest. ” 

“ He says he saw you through the open door. 
And he says, moreover, that he spoke to you about 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


148 

it, and that you begged of him to keep silence, but 
that he never passed his 'word to you to do so.” 

“ He says a good deal, evidently. Much better 
let sleeping dogs lie, Romeyn. The matter •was 
settled satisfactorily, and there is an end of it. ” 

“Not so,” intervened Ada. “We may be sure, 
Mynheer Middelstum, that Anton speaks the truth, 
even though he may not have intended it to be 
repeated. And in that case we owe you thanks which 
we shall not find it easy to express.” She thought 
how careful of others he was, and how tender-hearted, 
this habitually quiet man with his honourable career 
of public service, and his scientific hobbies. She 
felt that he was one of those people you were always 
valuing beneath their sterling worth, and there is 
nothing that raises a man to so high a pedestal in a 
good woman's estimation as that belief. 

“ I look upon it in a different light,” the poet went 
on stubbornly. ‘ ‘ I consider it is a liberty for one 
man to take with another, however kindly it may be 
meant. I am an admirer, of course, Middelstum, of 
your — charitable intentions, but I must say I wish 
you would keep them for still greater paupers than 
ourselves.” 

The words were rude, but the tone was much 
ruder. And yet Joris felt only conscious of the fact 
that Alfred’s contention was not altogether unreason- 
able, and that he might be accused, with some ap- 
pearance of justice, of having insulted the very people 
he wanted to benefit. Insulted ? Dear, dear, he had 
never insulted anybody in his life. 

“I am extremely sorry,” he stammered, hot and 
uncomfortable. “ I assure you I had not the slightest 
intention of hurting your feelings. I merely wished 
to spare Juffrouw Romeyn an annoyance which I 
saw she was desirous to avoid,” 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


149 

^‘Yes, certainly,” interrupted Juffrouw Romeyn, 
“we quite understand, thank you, and, as I say, we 
are truly obliged. Never mind my brother’s remarks 
for the moment. Mynheer Middlestum. He is out of 
temper to-day, for some reason or other. ” 

“I am sufficiently out of temper — ” began Alfred. 

“Silence, Alfred,” said the Major, authoritatively. 
“ Ada is right, and it was very thoughtful of Mynheer.” 

When Mevrouw spoke in that tone, her children 
did not venture to oppose her. Alfred sank into 
scowling silence, and, at this moment, the little din- 
ner having already passed through all preliminary 
stages, the Mayonnaise made its appearance, as ac- 
companiment to a lobster which was immediately to 
precede the final sweets. The maid set the dishes on 
the table, and gasped, as she recoiled after the effort, 
her eyes still fixed upon the splendours they contained. 
The scarlet lobster lay — of all that lives and dies — 
most beautiful in death — , enshrined in its wreath of 
crisp and curly salad leaves, the beautifully rounded 
scales of its glittering armour half revealing those 
riches of soft flesh that rest within, flesh delicately, 
almost transparently smooth and white beneath its 
rosy flush, as freshly fallen snows can lie that catch 
the brightened warmth of winter’s setting sun. Oh, 
lobsters of the past ! Oh, could we sons of evil walk 
backwards on our paths of life, as ye do, and live 
again those days when youth was young and hearty, 
and when we ate you and did not dream of you, ye 
lobsters of the past ! Alas, now we dream of you, ye 
lobsters, but we eat you no more ! 

Ada cast a triumphant glance at Joris Middlestum 
as the Mayonnaise was set down in its sauce-boat in 
front of her. It certainly looked sufficiently attractive 
to warrant her elation, for even the Dommelen French- 
woman’s dish of magnificent but malodorous memory* 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


150 

had not presented a fairer appearance of massy gold. 
And she smiled, as she turned from the beautiful dish 
to the man for whom she had prepared it. “You 
see, Mynheer,” she said, archly, “ that a Dutch- 
woman can still make French sauces. I fear me your 
wager is lost. ” 

“ Don’t halloo till you’re out of the wood,” growled 
Alfred, in an undertone. “The other one was good 
enough to look at.” 

“ I should think my eggs would be fresh,” retorted 
Ada indignantly. “Ah, no. That is true. Mynheer 
Middelstum thinks he can only get fresh eggs in an 
eating-house ! ” 

Joris was touched. She had evidently taken this 
trouble to please him — for he also did not believe in 
the wager — and it was a kindly thought on her part 
to prepare for his birthday — without any direct 
allusion — his mother’s dish. 

‘ ‘ I am persuaded the wager is lost, ” he said, gal- 
lantly, “ and I have only to throw myself on your 
mercy, Juffrouw.” 

The sauce had been going round, as he spoke, and 
Ada watched with beaming eyes the thick little 
creamy puddle that formed on everyone’s plate. Her 
hour of victory was come. In the face of her brother’s 
selfishness, and her mother’s neglect, she could assert 
herself at last. She had threatened them. She could 
carry out her threat, — if she chose. 

But Alfred was the first to push away his portion. 
“ I can’t eat this,” he said. 

“ It is his spite,” flashed across Ada’s mind. 

“No, it’s not eatable, Ada,” assented the Major. 
“Why, it’s as sweet as cream tart, and sweeter. 
You can’t eat sugar with fish.” 

Ada threw a quick glance of amusement at Joris — 
“These ignorant creatures!” it said. “Yes, you 


A QUESTION OF TASTE, 


151 

can, mamma,” she answered aloud. “ It’s the proper 
way to make it. The French way, you understand.” 
She cast a second glance at Joris, an appeal for 
corroboration, but faltered at the sight of his aston- 
ished face. 

“The French way, you know,” she repeated, 
quickly. “Just as the French put sugar in their 
salad-dressing, you know.” 

“Yes, the French put sugar in their salad-dressing, 
you know,” echoed Joris, and he gulped down a 
thick splash of his sauce over a tiny bit of lobster, 
really “ this is really very good,” he added, “ very well 
made, I assure you. I congratulate you, Juffrouw.” 
And he swallowed some more — “ It is a little sweet 
certainly, but the French, as you say, are fond of 
sweetening their oil.” And he set himself to finish- 
ing his sauce. 

Had Alfred allowed him time, he would probably 
have asked for some more. 

“Hang the French!” burst out that irascible 
young gentleman, boiling over with the rapidity of a 
saucepan of milk. “What do you mean, Middel- 
stum, by this confounded comedy ? Are you in 
league with the girl to abet her in her disgrace ? Til 
pay you every penny she owes you to-morrow, and 
I hope that’s the last we shall see of you and your 
sauces. You liar, you ! ” 

Middelstum started to his feet at a bound. “ I am 
in your house,” he gasped, “ and the guest of your 
mother, or I would have struck the word down your 
throat. But no one shall call me by such a name, even 
in the presence of his mother and sister, and think 
I have no means to check the insult as it deserves.” 

“ Silence, Alfred,- how dare you ? ” cried the Major. 
She was a soldier, and she saw that the quarrel 
must be stopped at once. “ How dare you use such 


152 A QUESTION OF TASTE, 

expressions at "my table and to a gentleman who is 
my friend ? Leave the room.” And she caught her 
puny offspring with , one dash of her mighty arm 
and swept him and herself out into the hall. 

For this humiliation Alfred immediately avenged 
himself by letting out the secret about Anton’s acces- 
sion to wealth and his refusal by Ada Thereby he 
broke his express word to his cousin, but his poetic 
imagination never allowed itself to be too strictly 
bound by actualities. He took up his mother to his 
room, that she might enjoy the particulars at her 
ease. 

It was by Anton’s assistance that he had decided 
to pay Joris at once. As for repaying Anton, that 
could wait — till Sibylla or oblivion brought the matter 
to a definite conclusion. So much Ada had at once 
understood. 

During dinner Mevrouw Romeyn had been de- 
lighted to realise that Joris Middelstum could throw 
away a hundred florins without missing them. This 
discovery had induced her to take his part the more 
vigorously. But her feelings on learning the truth 
about ‘^that beggarly Anton Trommels ” cannot be 
adequately described by Joris Middelstum’s friend. 

“Was it not enough to exasperate me, mother?” 
asked Alfred, in self-defence. “I tell you, the 
whole farce was a got-up affair between Middelstum 
and her. And I hear uncle Trommels's account of 
his fortune is very much exaggerated. He mayn’t 
be exactly in want, but he’s hardly well off.” 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


153 


CHAPTER XVIIL 

THE DEATH. 

JoRis and Ada remained alone in the dining-room. 
The room was full of light. It suddenly struck 
Ada that there was too much of it. She had not 
noticed before what a glare there was. And she 
wished there could have been less. 

In the middle stood the dining-table, disordered, 
as the others had left it, their chairs pushed back all 
awry, one napkin thrown forward, half over a plate. 
And there lay the lobster, tranquil in its everlasting 
sleep, and there stood also the little bowl with the 
sauce in it, curled into a placid smile of content. 

Joris had resumed his seat at the table. Ada had 
risen from hers, and taken her stand by the mantel- 
piece. 

A silence fell upon them after the door had closed 
noisily upon the retreating pair. Ada was the first 
to break it. 

‘ ‘ And ought the sauce not to be sweet ? ” she asked, 
almost inaudibly. 

“It is very good as it is,” he answered, evasively. 

“I know, of course, that the sweetness is unusual, 
but I mean, did not your mother always make it 
like this ? It is in accordance with her recipe that it 
should be very sweet indeed, is it not ? ” 

“ N — no,” stuttered truthful Joris. “ Hardly that. 
My mother was not in the habit of adding sugar, you 
know.” 


154 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


“Then it is not like your mother’s sauce at all ? ” 

“It is very nice,” said Joris, whose kindness of 
heart had made him diplomatic as well as truthful, 
“though hardly, perhaps, with fish.” 

And now Ada understood the full depth of Betje’s 
treachery. 

“It is not good,” she said, slowly. “It is sick- 
ening. And I have lost my wager. Mynheer Mid- 
delstum.” 

Joris did not answer her, for he did not know 
what to say. 

Suddenly she turned towards him, and the blaze 
of the gas fell full upon her hot face encircled by its 
cloud of softest blue. 

“I am glad,” she burst out, “that it has failed. 
Yes, I am glad. I am glad. You must go away, 
Mynheer Middelstum, as my brother said just now, 
and you must never come and see us again. No, 
not after the disgrace and the shame of this evening 
— oh, the pity of it that we should have wronged you 
thus ! you must never come and see us again.” 

“ But, my dear young lady,” began Joris, in amaze- 
ment, “you surely do not think I attach such 
importance to your brother’s hasty words ! He was 
vexed about that question of the damage, and I fear 
now that I may have acted indelicately, though cer- 
tainly I acted for the best. He will apologise when 
he has cooled down. I am sure he will apologise. 
And there will be an end of the whole affair. 

“Oh, it is not that,” cried Ada, “disgraceful as 
that is too, after all your kindness. No, no, you 
must go away, and never come again to this wretched 
house. Do you know what might have happened, 
had I won this wager to-night } ” she hid her burning 
face in her hands. “You don’t know my mother. 
You don’t know me. You can’t imagine what we 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


55 


wanted you to come here for. And why we were 
kind to you. And why I — oh, I don’t know myself 
to what my misery might have brought me. ’ But 
you must condone my poor brother’s wild outburst. 
He was right. Where he spoke of my disgrace, he 
was right. Oh, I am glad that it failed. And I can’t 
cook. You see, I can’t cook. I never could. I am 
glad that it failed. I am glad.” She seemed to 
find some consolation in the frequent repetition of 
the words. 

Joris had only partly understood this garbled half- 
confession. But he could not remain blind to the 
young lady’s extreme confusion and distress. And 
from a sentence caught up here and there he came to 
the conclusion that Mevrouw Romeyn might have 
had her own reasons for so frequently disappearing 
from the scene. 

“But, Mejuffrouw,” he said, a little huskily, “you 
cannot surely wish to punish me with banishment 
because the Mayonnaise has failed } ” 

“You must go,” replied Ada, still with her hands 
before her face. “It is better for us all that you 
should go. And I, after what has passed between us 
to-night, I could never look you in the face again. I 
should not wish to do so. ” 

‘ ‘ But you have forgotten that it is I who have won 
the wager, not you. And therefore the right to im- 
pose conditions is mine.” He left his chair, and came 
round to the mantelpiece. “You remember the 
agreement, for you proposed it yourself I may ask 
you whatever I will. And I also am glad that you 
failed, for the arrogance of my asking exceeds any- 
thing you can have deemed possible. I ask you to 
allow me to continue coming to this house, till some 
day we leave it together — for ever. ” 

“But, Joris,” said Ada five minutes later, “the 


A QUESTION OF TASTE. 


156 

responsibility is a terrible one. What have I done ? 
Whoever would undertake, as I have undertaken, 
without hesitation, to satisfy the requirements of so 
fastidious an individual as yourself ? 

“My dearest,” replied Joris, laughing, as he drew 
her towards him, ‘ ‘ on that score you may surely rest 
content.” He pointed to the unfinished meal before 
them. “ Have I not already eaten your sauce with 
my lobster? ” he said, — he, with his rule of “too rich, 
too sour, too sweet,” “ and have I not declared — and 
almost thought — that it was nice ? ” 

Ah me, it s a long time ago since all this happened. 
He has thirteen children. In the good old time, before 
people had reckoned up the price of boots, they used 
to call it living happy ever afterwards. 

And Anton — being rich — has only one. 


THE END. 


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